Acts of Mercy (9 page)

Harper said, “We have to talk, Mr. President.”

“All right, Maxwell. Go ahead.”

“In private.”

“We can talk in front of Christopher,” Augustine said. “He’s on our side, you know.”

“I think it would be best if we spoke alone.”

Justice moved his feet in a self-conscious way. Unlike the President, he still wore his jacket and his tie was crisply knotted. He said to Augustine, “I can wait for you inside, sir...”

“Nonsense. I prefer to have you here.”

Harper felt his hands clenching, an old habit when he was upset and one he hated in himself. But how could he be expected to maintain rigid control in the face of a crisis that, in spite of him, grew graver by the day? He wanted to say that this was hardly a matter to be discussed in front of a Secret Service bodyguard, of all people, but he curbed the impulse. There was no sense in arguing the point.

“Very well,” he said. “I suppose you know about the UPI story that broke a little while ago.”

“Yes,” Augustine said, “I know about it. I had a call from Senator Jackman just before I came out here.”

“How accurate was their quote?”

“Fairly accurate. They paraphrased, of course.”

“Then you really did say you would have urinated on those dissidents in Phoenix?”

“No, I said I would have pissed on them.”

“What?”

“Don’t look so shocked, Maxwell,” Augustine said. “I realize the word
piss
is still considered a little vulgar at Harvard and the Institute of Policy Studies, but it really isn’t, you know. It’s just a word. Besides, I was making a joke.”

“Joke?”

“Exactly. Isn’t that so, Christopher?”

“Yes sir,” Justice said.

Augustine nodded. “A harmless little joke.”

Harper stared at him. For an instant he felt as though he were standing there with a pair of ciphers instead of just one; that all of the President’s intellect had been abrogated, reducing him to a witless figurehead who prattled on about semantics and making jokes.

Trying to keep his tone reasonable, he said, “Mr. President, didn’t you realize the repercussions of a statement like that?”

“Belatedly,” Augustine said, but there was no apology in his tone. “Which is why I specifically stated that the comment was to be taken off the record.”

“Off the record? Then how did it leak out to UPI? Unless it was the
Post
reporter ...”

“It wasn’t the
Post
reporter. I’ve known him for years and he can be a bastard at times, but he would never betray a direct Presidential request. Neither would the other two.”

“Then who was responsible?”

“There was only one other person present besides Christopher,” the President said. “I shouldn’t have asked him to sit in, I was a damned fool for doing it, but I thought it would be a psychological advantage to have him there, let him see how I was going to handle the media.”

“For God’s sake-Briggs?”

Augustine nodded. The sun burning against his face illuminated it so brightly that the lines on his cheeks and around his eyes appeared deep and sharply etched, like the scars of old wounds. “Briggs,” he said. “I didn’t expect he’d go this far, but I should have known he was capable of it.”

Harper’s hands had clenched again; he flattened them out against his hips. “I suppose we’ve all been guilty of underestimating people.”

“Yes. Well, Briggs is a dangerous man, there’s no question of that now. Something has to be done about him.”

“Granted. But what?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to decide, walking out here with Christopher.”

“And?”

“And—I don’t know; I just don’t know. I could fire him, that’s the obvious choice—”

“It’s also the worst thing you could do right now,” Harper said. “It would make a martyr out of him.”

“I know that, Maxwell. I’ve already discarded the idea.”

The collar of Harper’s shirt felt tight, sticky, but he did not lift a hand to loosen his tie. If Justice could stand the heat properly dressed, so could he. He felt Justice looking at him then, glanced at the man and saw his own frustration mirrored in the steady brown eyes; he put his gaze back on Augustine.

The President said, “There’s got to be another way.”

“I don’t envision it yet if there is. Beyond your being very careful, that is, not to make any more controversial remarks—no candid comments, no jokes, nothing that can be misinterpreted or deliberately taken out of context.”

“I have every intention of being careful,” Augustine said. “From now on I’ll exclude Briggs from press conferences and other public appearances; I’ve already informed him by memo that he is not to join us on the trip to The Hollows this weekend. But that won’t stop him. No, there
has
to be some sort of direct action. And someone has to find it damned soon.”

Harper was silent. The three of them stood in the hot sun, listening to the faint hum of a lawn mower somewhere on the grounds, the murmur of traffic and voices from the East Gate as the last of the White House tour groups left for the day. Listening to their own thoughts.

Augustine said finally, “Isn’t that so, Maxwell?”

“Yes,” Harper said. “Someone will have to find a way.”

We have all the evidence now that we need: the traitor stands convicted. And the hour of his execution is at hand.

When we slip quietly into the press secretary’s office, the anteroom is dark and as deserted as the West Wing corridors; it is after nine o‘clock and nearly all the White House staff has left for the day. But there is a strip of light showing beneath the door of the traitor’s private office. He is waiting for us just as we requested by telephone at five o’clock. Even though we did not tell him why we wanted to see him at such a late hour, he agreed to the meeting without question. In that sense only he is an ideal press secretary—a man whose time is perceived solely in terms of how others will utilize it.

We open the door without knocking, step inside. Briggs has been sitting on the leather couch against one wall and he frowns when we come in, probably in reaction to our unannounced entrance. Then he stands, puts aside a sheaf of press clippings he has been reading and comes forward. He does not smile as he faces us.

He seems to want to say something about observing the proprieties before entering one’s private domain, but he is too used to a role of passive servility to assert himself to anyone who represents authority. Instead he says, “Well, right on time.”

“Yes,” we say, “right on time.”

“Welt—would you care to sit down?”

“We’d...
I’d
rather stand.” Careful. Careful.

“All right.” He takes a package of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, extracts one, lights it with a silver lighter, and blows smoke carefully to one side. “Well,” he says for the third time, “what is it you wanted to see me about? I had the impression on the phone that it was important.”

“It is,” we say, and move past him, stop beside his desk and pretend to look through the open venetian blinds at the lighted grounds beyond. We let the fingers of our left hand slide along the desk, come to rest on the smooth black onyx ashtray we have seen there before. Then we turn slowly to face Briggs again.

His head is wreathed in smoke from his cigarette. A thin streamer of it rises from his hand in a vertical line that seems to bisect his face, so that for an instant we see him as two fragmented halves, as if he has been cleaved in two. The image is unsettling and we take a step backward and one more to our left—but not so far away from the desk that we cannot now reach the black onyx ashtray with our right hand.

Briggs says, “If it has something to do with the backgrounder this morning—”

“It has everything to do with that,” we say, “and nothing to do with it. I’m here because of you—what you are and what you’ve tried to do.”

He avoids our eyes, puffs deeply on his cigarette. “I don’t know what you mean,” he says.

“Oh but you do. You know exactly what I mean.”

His expression becomes defensive. “My conscience is clear,” he says. “I’ve never done anything that wasn’t in the best interests of the party, the presidency, the country.”

“Not to mention the best interests of Austin Briggs.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” We look at him more closely, and what we see feeds our hatred for him, cements our purpose. “You’re a parasite, Austin, and a righteous, self-deluding one at that. You don’t have an ounce of compassion or human decency.”

He stiffens, looks at us, looks away. There is a stirring of fear in him now; we can see it in his eyes. “I don’t have to listen to that,” he says.

“No, of course you don’t. There’s no point in going on with it, is there?”

“None at all,” Briggs says, and draws again on his cigarette.

“You’re about to lose your ash,” we say.

He blinks. “What?”

“The ash on your cigarette, you’re about to lose it,” we say. And we pick up the black onyx ashtray, cup it in our palm, extend it toward him.

“Oh,” he says in a confused way, “yes.” He takes a step forward, and his gaze is locked on the ashtray; he does not notice that we have braced one hip against the desk, that we stand rigid and poised. Our heart is racing wildly now.

When he reaches out with his cigarette for the ashtray we raise our left hand and jab the knuckles sharply into his shoulder. He stops in mid-stride, frowning in surprise, and turns his head toward his shoulder—and that exposes his left temple, makes of it a target on which we fasten our own gaze. Then we bring the ashtray up with all our strength and drive the flat edge of it against his temple.

There is a dull, ugly sound. Briggs cries out in pain, staggers but does not fall. We go after him, swing the ashtray a second time, feel it connect solidly with the bone above one eye. This time he makes no sound and this time he collapses immediately, boneless, and lies staring up at us with eyes like discs of polished glass.

The execution is finished: the traitor is dead.

We take several deep breaths, look away from Briggs and cock our head to listen. No one has heard his cry; the building is shrouded in silence. We realize his dropped cigarette is smoldering on the carpet, and we pick it up and tamp it out in the ashtray which we find we are still holding in our hand. On the carpet is a small black scorch mark, but there is nothing to be done about that. The ashtray is undamaged, and since the blows we struck did not draw blood, there are no marks on it. We replace it on the desk.

It occurs to us as we go to the window that we have, in spite of all our premeditation, acted with too much passion and not enough foresight in our planning. We might have chosen a better place for Briggs’s execution than his own office, than the White House. But it is too late to worry about that now. What is done is done.

We roll up the blinds, bind them into place, then unlatch the window and open it. Carefully we put our head out into the muggy night air. Floodlights illuminate the rose garden, the trees and shubbery on the south lawn, but the oleander bushes beneath the window are wrapped in shadow. Over by the south balcony, we see one of the security people walking his patrol—but after a moment he disappears around the east corner. There is no one else within the range of our vision; night security on the grounds is considerable, but it is also concentrated at the perimeters to guard against illegal entry.

We open the window all the way, return quickly to where Briggs lies sprawled on the carpet. We grasp him under the armpits, struggle with his inert weight to the window, and manage to lift him across the sill. Perspiration spots our forehead; the effort of moving Briggs has left us panting. We take a moment to catch our breath, looking out again at the grounds. They still appear deserted in all directions.

Leaning our shoulder against Briggs’s hip, we push him over the sill.

He falls loosely, making a whispery rustling sound in the oleanders and then a barely audible thump as he strikes the ground—not heavy enough to register on the sound-sensor equipment monitored by Security. When we peer down we see him lying in a pocket of heavy shadow, his arms folded under him, his head resting near one of several large decorative stones which border the oleanders. Our plan will work after all, we think. It will appear as though he was leaning out of the window, lost his balance, fell and struck his head on one of those stones. A tragic accident.

We turn from the window, leaving it open, and glance around the office. There is nothing out of place, no signs of violence. Satisfied, we cross to the door, open it, slip into the anteroom; and a moment later our steps echo hollowly in the empty corridor as we hurry away from the scene of our execution.

The scene of our act of mercy.

It was 10:25 when the telephone rang in the Oval Study.

The sudden sound made Augustine jerk his head up from
Fred Fearnot and the Rioters,
the Hal Standish railroad dime novel he was paging through. He looked at the Seth Thomas wall clock, noted the time. Pretty late for someone to be calling, he thought, unless it’s important business. He let the phone ring three more times while he rubbed at his tired eyes, took a sip of water from the tumbler on his desk blotter. Then he reached out and caught up the receiver.