Seven Days in May

Monday

Even as he groped for the button that would shut off the alarm clock, Casey knew it was going to be one of those days. A small ache at the back of his head told him that he had missed too much sleep, and the bitterness in his mouth made him wonder why he always smoked three times as much-at a party as he did in an evening at home.

The shower helped. Wrapped in his towel, he went downstairs and dialed General Scott's quarters. There was an answer on the second ring.

"Colonel Casey, General," he said. "I hope I'm not too early."

"Not at all, Jiggs." Scott was already in full voice. "What's up?"

"Sir Harry Lancaster requested that his appointment be moved up to eight-thirty, sir. I didn't think you'd mind. I'll have the briefing papers for you by 0800."

"That's perfectly okay, Jiggs."

"I meant to call you yesterday, sir," Casey said, "but it slipped my mind, I'm afraid, and by the time I came to last night I was afraid you might have been asleep, so instead I-"

Scott interrupted. "Well, you were right. I turned in early and dropped off right away. Must have been asleep by ten-thirty. I haven't had such a good rest in months."

"Yes, sir," Casey said. "I'll see you at the office, sir."

Unless I was dreaming last night, Casey thought as he climbed the stairs again, that's a big fat fib, General.

Why would Scott lie to him? He couldn't remember a single time in a year when the chairman had told him a falsehood or had even tried to mislead him. Scott was sometimes devious-perhaps a better word was cautious-with Congress or the White House, but with his own staff he seemed to go out of his way to lay out all the facts.

And why conceal a meeting with Prentice? The senator obviously seemed to know about the alert. Perhaps there was something going on at higher echelons.

But that would be odd too. As director of the Joint Staff, Casey was supposed to know everything involving the military. Supposed to? He had to.

Marge peeked out from the bathroom, her face dripping.

"Throw me a towel, Jiggs. A dry one, please. Someday, dear, maybe you'll be famous and wealthy and we won't have to get up with the birds any more."

Casey said little at breakfast. The puzzle over Scott's remark had brought the ache back to the base of his skull and hot coffee only dulled it. He scanned the front page of the morning newspaper, but couldn't concentrate, not even on a speculative story about a "new direction" in military policy to fit the treaty. Marge fussed a little over him.

"You didn't get your sleep, Jiggs," she said.

"Not enough of it, anyway," he said. "Thanks to Don. For want of a spare, an hour was lost, or something like that."

Five days a week a Pentagon sedan called for Casey.

The olive-drab car from the motor pool was one of the perquisites of the director of the Joint Staff. It let Marge keep the family car and let Casey get his paper read before he reached the office. But today he left it folded on his lap while the early-morning breeze, funneled in through the driver's open window, blew on his face. When he finally picked up the paper, his eye fell on a small headline: "V.P. to Visit Ancestral Village." Casey read the story:

Vice-President Vincent Gianelli, who flies to Italy Wednesday for a good-will visit, is planning to spend the weekend in the remote mountain hamlet where his grandfather was born, it was learned.

The story went on with a description of Corniglio, a village high in the Apennines south of Parma. Perched on the mountains at the end of a dirt road, it contained only a few hundred residents. Gianelli would sleep in his grandfather's hut Friday and Saturday nights, and return to Rome on Sunday.

Casey thought again what an ideal weekend it was for an alert: no Congress in town, no vice-president. Not one in a dozen field commanders would suspect such a time might be chosen for a readiness exercise. No wonder the Joint Chiefs picked it.

Casey arrived at his office at 7:45. He made the customary check of his appearance in the washroom, then collected the briefing papers on Sir Harry Lancaster's appointment and walked down the E-ring corridor to the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He had been seated in the waiting room only a moment when Scott strode in.

"Good morning, Jiggs," he said as he swept by. "Come on in."

Casey couldn't help admiring his boss as the four-star General took his morning ration of cigars from a box on his desk and laid them neatly alongside a large green blotter. At fifty-eight he was all military. His lightly tanned face was unlined except for the tiny network of creases at the corner of each eye. He was six feet two and carried close to two hundred pounds without the slightest trace of softness. His hair was salt-and-pepper gray, a full thatch, combed neatly from a side part. A strong jaw and high cheekbones gave him a handsome, rugged face.

Casey had no doubt that those who called Scott the most popular military man since Dwight D. Eisenhower were right. Feature writers had praised him for almost thirty years: as the World War II fighter pilot who once downed seven ME-109's in a single day, as one of the first jet aces in Korea, as the brilliant air commander in Iran whose pinpoint bombing and resourceful use of tactical air cover almost made up for the inadequacies of our ground forces there.

Magazine articles often claimed to see in Scott a blend of the best of Eisenhower and MacArthur. He had, they said, Eisenhower's warm personality and appealing grin, plus MacArthur's brilliant mind, tough patriotism and slightly histrionic flair for leadership. Casey knew something else that the writers generally did not realize. Scott had an intuitive sense about politics and was widely read in the literature of that art. Casey had yet to see him make a major blunder in tactics, either military or political. When Scott protested the Korean War policies that prevented the Air Force from bombing across the Yalu, he managed to make his case without getting into the kind of trouble that ended MacArthur's career. Scott's recommendations had gone through channels, to his superiors, and had never been made public until someone (Casey guessed Murdock) slipped them to the Scripps-Howard newspapers a few months ago. Again, Scott bitterly dissented from President Frazier's decision to sue for peace in Iran rather than risk a nuclear war, but he kept his disagreement in proper bounds. Even on the subject of the disarmament treaty, when his position as chairman of the Joint Chiefs allowed him to speak publicly, he never quite crossed the line into forbidden territory.

Now he was concentrating on his work, reading rapidly through the briefing packet, wetting his thumb as he turned the pages.

"For once the British offer more than they ask," Scott said. "What do you think of this proposal that they shift an airborne regiment to our command in Okinawa?"

"I like it, sir. Those Highlanders are first-rate troops and the regimental commander is a good friend of General Faraday. They ought to work well together."

"I'd forgotten that. I think it's a pretty fair idea. Thanks, Jiggs. I think I'm up on everything now." Casey turned to go. "By the way, please tell the officers who drafted these papers that I thought they were excellent."

Now, who would think a straight guy like that would lie to a fellow before breakfast? Casey closed the door quietly behind him. Scott was already into the pile of papers awaiting his attention. The routine workday of the Joint Chiefs had begun.

Across the river at the White House the day's work was also well under way. President Jordan Lyman, like his chief military adviser, started early, and by 8:30 he had been hard at it for an hour. The difference was that Lyman was still in bed. Around him lay the jumbled sections of a dozen newspapers, evidence that he had finished his self-imposed weekly chore of sampling the press. He chose Sunday editions for their fatter letters-to-the-editor pages and the "big" editorials that publishers for some reason liked to print on the weekend.

This week's batch gave him a pretty clear picture of the mood of the country, and it definitely was not an optimistic one. The Atlanta Constitution's lead editorial, for example, began:

As the date for the first stage of disarmament draws near, our skepticism as to Russia's good faith mounts. We hope, of course, that President Lyman's trust in Moscow proves justified, but ...

There was a similar rumble in the New York Times judgment, delivered in customary doomsday style:

We supported the nuclear disarmament venture with grave reservations. These reservations have by no means been diminished in recent days by the pronouncements in Pravda, the official Soviet party organ ...

My God, Lyman mused, you'd think editorial writers were the only people in America who ever had grave reservations. He climbed out of bed, walked into the big oval study, and poured himself a cup of coffee from the carafe that had been left there a few minutes earlier.

Through the tall windows overlooking the south lawn Jordan Lyman could see the steady morning rush of cars along Constitution Avenue. It's a funny thing, he thought. The people in those cars work for the government, just as I do. I can tell them what to do. I can make their jobs or wipe them out. But they have the power to undo what I do, by simple error, or by omission, or even by design.

He was President and famous. They were little bureaucrats and obscure. But they were, by and large, secure and befriended in their obscurity, while he stood vulnerable and alone in his fame.

Lyman had read more than enough American history to have known, on the day he returned from his oath-taking to enter the White House, that he faced loneliness. But his pre-inaugural comprehension had been academic, born of memoirs and legends. (Harry Truman said: "The buck stops here.") No reading, no advice from those who preceded him, had prepared him for the crushing emotional load of the Presidency. Jordan Lyman would never forget the hour he had spent, shaken and depressed, after receiving his first full briefing on the mechanics by which he alone could, in some fatal moment of crisis, open the floodgates of nuclear war.

He took a gulp of hot coffee. "Cut it out, Lyman," he growled out loud. "You're feeling sorry for yourself again."

The President picked up the morning paper from the tray beside the coffee jug where the mess attendant left it for him each day. He glanced at the front page and found the headline he knew would be there: "Lyman's Popularity Drops to Lowest Point in Poll's History."

He had expected some temporary slump in his rating. The acrimony of the Senate debate on the treaty had made a lot of headlines, which in turn couldn't have failed to hurt him. But he had been unprepared for the actual figures given him last night by his press secretary. Twenty-nine per cent, he thought, we're really getting clobbered on this one. We? Don't kid yourself. It's you, y-o-u.

He returned to the bedroom, dropped his pajamas on the floor, and went into the bathroom to wash and shave. He allowed himself to dwell a moment longer on that godawful Gallup Poll, then chided himself out loud again.

"Cheer up, world leader. Don't forget the Literary Digest picked Alf Landon in '36. You must be doing all right."

Ten minutes later he was on his way to breakfast. As he crossed the big upstairs hall, he nodded to an Army warrant officer sitting in a chair outside his room.

"Good morning."

"Good morning, Mr. President."

Nothing in the entire Presidential routine depressed Lyman quite so much as his exchange of morning greetings with these soldiers. There were five of them, and every night one sat outside Lyman's bedroom while he slept. The man on duty held a slim portfolio on his lap throughout the night. Inside it was a thin black box containing the complicated codes by which the President-and only the President-could give the orders sending America into nuclear war.

The first morning glimpse of his "atomic shadow," as Lyman called the unobtrusive warrant officers, always seemed to hurl him back into the duties of the Presidency, as though he had plunged nude into icy water. But he had learned to live with the facts of nuclear terror, and except for this first shock every day he paid no more attention to it than he did to the three-inch-thick plates of bulletproof glass set inside his office windows. The glass shields were insurance against a madman with a hunting rifle 500 yards away; the warrant officers were insurance against a madman with a ballistic missile 5,000 miles away.

Now Lyman was breakfasting in the small white-paneled family dining room downstairs, and the most pressing problem on his mind was how to teach those idiots in the kitchen to loosen the segments of a grapefruit before serving it. There was a knock on the door-jamb.

"Ah'm workin' foh the Gallup Poll," said the newcomer in the richest Georgia drawl he could manage, "and ah wantuh know how yuh feel about Jordan Lyman. Someone must like the guy. Hiyuh, Mistuh President!"

Raymond Clark's grin was as wide as his face. Even the flesh along the jawbones seemed to crinkle. Lyman laughed out loud. As always, he felt better at the sight of the junior senator from Georgia, this morning, as often, his breakfast partner.

"Put me down as undecided," Lyman said. "How about you?"

"Oh, Ah think he's a smaht ol' boy," Clark replied. "He's jes' ahead of his time, that's all." Then, dropping his heavy accent, he added: "But you'll come out okay, Jordie."

The waiter appeared with eggs, bacon, toast and fresh coffee, and the two men turned their attention to eating. As they ate, Lyman wondered if Clark ever realized how much this friendship meant to him. The Georgian was almost unique among Lyman's friends in Washington, for their relationship, though politically intimate, was only incidentally so. The bond between the two men was really almost entirely a personal one.

The public knew Ray Clark as Jordan Lyman's political manager, the man who got Lyman the presidential nomination on the third ballot at Chicago by making a deal with Governor Vincent Gianelli of New York to throw his strength to Lyman when his own momentum was checked.

But neither the public at large nor anyone at all, for that matter, knew that Clark, twenty years earlier, had given Jordan Lyman an infinitely more precious gift.

It happened in Korea where the two men-both reserve officers recalled in 1951 and assigned as infantry platoon leaders-commanded adjacent outfits on Heartbreak Ridge. They had returned together to the line after a final preattack briefing one foggy morning when Lyman simply froze, teeth chattering, eyes filling with helpless tears, in the grip of that utter exhaustion of body and spirit known as combat fatigue.

Clark joshed him gently at first. "Come on, Yankee boy," he said, using the old stand-by with which he kidded his Ohio-born buddy. "Let's go."

Lyman did not move.

"For Christ's sake, Jordie, snap out of it," Clark said, deadly serious. He spoke quietly so Lyman's men couldn't hear.

Again there was no reaction.

Clark put himself between Lyman and the troops, shoved him into a dugout and slapped him, left, right, left, right, four times, swinging his open hand as hard as he could. The two men stood there, nose to nose, staring at each other, for half a minute.

Then Clark asked: "You okay, Jordie?" and Lyman replied: "Yeah, Ray. Let's go."

Clark took a mortar fragment in his elbow that day, just after Lyman guaranteed the success of their attack by personally silencing two Chinese machine guns with hand grenades. As soon as he could, Lyman located Clark in a field hospital and visited him.

"Ray," he said, "I want to thank you for yesterday morning. You saved my life, and a lot more, when you socked me."

Clark lowered his voice, for the hospital tent was crowded, but his words were intense.

"Jordie," he said, "as far as I'm concerned I saw nothing and did nothing. What happened to you has happened to millions of men, and if you're as smart as I think you are you'll forget it ever did happen. I'm never going to mention it again-to you or anyone else."

In the years that followed, Clark kept his word. In fact, on a couple of occasions when Lyman seemed disposed to rehash the incident Clark wrenched the conversation into another channel. No phrase that might reawaken the memory of that morning, not even the nickname "Yankee boy," was ever again used by him in talk with Lyman.

But Lyman had not been able to follow Clark's advice, although he tried to. For months the incident regularly plagued his dreams. Even now he would relive it in his sleep once or twice a year. The very fact of his close political ties with Clark, their constant association, kept it in the back of his mind. The Georgian had been on hand for all the political crises-the key television speech in Lyman's race for governor of Ohio, his nomination for President, election night, and even the evening last winter when Lyman decided to fight his treaty through a balky Senate without accepting any reservations. Lyman never admitted to himself, much less to Clark, that he needed him. Each time he called on his friend he found other reasons- Clark's judgment, his easy humor, his common sense and common touch. But he was always there at the right time.

Now the President rubbed the last crumbs of toast from his fingers and reopened the conversation.

"I'd be less than honest, Ray, if I said the poll didn't hurt. It sure does. But I know this treaty is the right thing to do. Wait till you see the polls this fall."

Clark again assumed his drawl. "Ah'm not arguin' with you, Mistuh President, Jordie, suh. If Cousin Feemerov ovuh in the Kremlin pulls a fast one, we holluh 'foul' an' staht stackin' the bombs again." He reverted to normal accents. "Either way, by fall, you'll be in better shape."

Lyman laughed. "Ray, if I didn't know you better I'd think George Bernard Shaw picked you as the model for Eliza Doolittle. How do you decide when to turn that cracker dialect on and off?"

Clark's smile was slow and lazy. "Mr. President, a man has to keep in practice. In Georgia I'm a country boy trying to keep Sherman from coming back. In Washington I am a graduate of the Harvard Law School engaged in the practice of political science and high statesmanship."

"Okay, professor," Lyman replied. "Now suppose you give me a little lecture on the state of the Senate these days, with special reference to my program."

"I'm not sure yet, Mr. President, but I think it will be sticky. I think it might be smart to put off the big domestic stuff till next year. I know there's an election coming up, but we senators of the United States are feeling a little pushed around after that row on the treaty."

"Spoken like a true Senate man, Ray," Lyman said. "I don't suppose you did any of the pushing?"

"Why, Mr. President, I wouldn't say that, now. I may have helped some of my colleagues reason together a bit, but no more. Anyway, there won't be anything much doing on the Hill for three weeks now, with the recess starting. I'm in the clear myself except for an armed services meeting tomorrow to find out what will be left of our defenses after you take the bombs away."

"Scott going to be there?"

"Yessir, Gentleman Jim himself is going to deliver the over-all report and then we'll hear in detail from the Navy on its plans."

"Well, if Prentice gets Scott to open up on the treaty again, keep an eye on him. Give me a ring if he says anything interesting, will you?"

Clark got up from the table. "Sure will. By the way, what do you hear from Doris and Liz?"

"Doris called last night from Louisville," said Lyman. "Liz's baby is due in a day or two. Certainly this week. Potential grandpas get kind of excited, Ray."

The Lymans' only child, Elizabeth, had been married a week before his own inauguration.

"We could use a little one right now," said Clark. "Why waste your first grandchild on a week when you're riding high in the polls?"

"Liz is a great little politician," said Lyman affectionately. "I think she's timing it perfectly for Pop."

"Give 'em both my love," said Clark.

The two friends headed for the west wing. Lyman dropped off at his office and Clark sauntered out through the visitors' lobby. There were only two reporters on the job at this early hour, but they both wanted to know how the President felt about the new Gallup Poll.

"I never quote the President," said Clark. The lazy smile spread over his face. "But you can quote me, if you're hard up. Twenty-nine per cent of the people still think Truman lost to Dewey in 1948."

Lyman settled himself behind the big desk in his office. A moment later Paul Girard popped his head through the door from his adjoining cubbyhole. Lyman looked at him and shook his head.

"I can tell by those eyes, you didn't get to bed early," he said. "Where were you last night?"

"In the camp of the enemy," Girard said, shaking his big, ugly head morosely. "I dined, or rather drank, at the home of Stewart Dillard, lobbyist for Union Instruments."

"Watch it." Lyman's grin belied his tone. "Remember Sherman Adams and Matt Connolly."

"If I promised anybody anything last night, I can't remember it this morning," Girard said. "Anyhow, I spent most of the time listening to that bastard Prentice proclaim his undying loyalty to you."

"I'll bet he did. Well, we can console ourselves in the knowledge that no one else likes him either."

"General James Mattoon Scott ought to love him, the way Prentice was talking about him last night," Girard grumbled. "Christ, the way he makes it sound, you'd think Scott could walk on water."

He pulled a white, five-by-seven card out of his pocket and slipped it into a holder on Lyman's desk.

"There's today's line-up, Mr. President. The first batter is Cliff Lindsay. He's due at 8:40, or a minute and a half ago."

"Hold him up for a couple of minutes, please, Paul," Lyman said. "I want to make a call."

He flicked the switch on his intercom box as Girard left.

"Esther? Please get me the Vice-President. Yes, he's probably still at home."

A red light winked beside his phone and he pushed the proper button.

"Vince? Yeah, I know. I saw it too. How about coming down for lunch? You can cheer me up. I want to talk about your trip, too. 12:30 okay? Fine. Thanks, Vince."

Cliff Lindsay, president of the AFL-CIO, bowed slightly to the President as Girard ushered him in. He said nothing as they shook hands and Lyman motioned him to a chair,

"You sent for me, Mr. President?" Lindsay's tone was totally noncommittal.

"Yes, I did, Cliff. Those strikes at the missile plants on the Coast don't make any sense at all to me. The men are getting good wages. There are no valid grievances that I can see. Maybe there's something I don't know. I thought maybe you could fill me in."

"You've been getting your story from the Secretary of Labor," Lindsay said stiffly. "We don't consider him exactly an unbiased source."

Lyman smiled. "You mean he's too pro-labor?"

"If that's intended as a joke, Mr. President, I can assure you the executive council won't take it that way."

"I can assure you this is no time for jokes," Lyman answered, his own tone now sharp too. "I want you to tell me why those men are on strike."

"It's no secret, Mr. President. Sure, it's a jurisdictional dispute. The sheet-metal workers get into a row with the aluminum workers, the Teamsters side with the sheet-metal guys and next thing you know the jobs are picketed. Maybe it's not the best beef in the world, but that's no cause for your Secretary of Labor to start hollering that labor is irresponsible. He knows damn well that's no way to get people back to work."

"The Secretary made the statement with my approval," the President said. "Cliff, I'm sick and tired of the Federation's all-or-nothing attitude."

Lindsay's face was passive, but his blue eyes darted around the room angrily.

"If we were all last time," he said slowly, "we could be nothing next time."

"If that's a threat," Lyman said, "I must say your timing is poor. If we don't show some unity now, with the Russians watching us over this treaty, there might be no next time."

"You got to give me time to work this thing out," Lindsay said, less aggressive but still stubborn.

"I'll give you a week," Lyman said. "If you can't clean it up by next Monday morning, I'll have to send the Attorney General into court."

He escorted Lindsay to the door. Again the union chief took the offered hand but said nothing. Lyman let it pass. Cliff was all right, and he had a few political problems of his own.

Lyman buzzed for Girard. "Paul, tell those West Virginia people that the Secretary of the Interior will handle the Rhododendron Queen. Tell them I've got a special Security Council meeting or something."

"Any real reason, Mr. President?"

"Yes, dammit. I need to plan some strategy and if I'm going to do it, I need to think-for a change."

Girard bowed slightly, grinning. Lyman knew no other man who could smile with quite that mixture of cynicism and warmth.

"I know, boss," he said. "It comes over all of us now and then."

Jordan Lyman knew he had handled Lindsay right and was sure he had come out ahead, but he was angry and frustrated. I came into office after that mess in Iran had this country's stock down to almost nothing, he thought. I had to do something about that and I did. I sat down to negotiate a disarmament treaty, something every President since Teddy Roosevelt tried to do, and I got one. What do I get? Labor is down on me. Business has always been hostile, and now that they'll have to make something besides nuclear warheads they're madder than ever. And if you believe Gallup, the public-whatever that is-is mad too.

It was hard for Lyman to understand the country's apparent hostility toward the treaty. Neither he nor anyone in his administration would ever forget the wave of relief that swept the nation and, in fact, the world the day the treaty was signed. A photographer had snapped a picture as Feemerov left the United States embassy in Vienna after the all-night session that buttoned it up. Lyman and the Russian, shaking hands on the steps, were haggard and unshaven after the final bargaining, but morning sun flooded the scene with the promise of a new day. The picture was printed in every city in the world. Men looked at it, felt the weight of nuclear holocaust lift from their shoulders, and wept.

But later the reaction set in. He began to understand how Wilson felt after Versailles. No matter how many times you explained, publicly or privately, the safeguards so painstakingly built into the treaty, someone always made a splash by charging "appeasement" or "sellout." The Senate debate on ratification gave every member of the lunatic fringe plenty of chance to rant. People started to worry about their jobs, as if the United States couldn't prosper without making bombs. As if Marx and Lenin and Khrushchev had been right.

God knows, Lyman thought, I don't trust the Kremlin either. That's why it took seven weeks to negotiate that treaty instead of seven days. But how can we possibly lose? If they cheat, we know it and we're back in business on twenty-four hours' notice. We don't dismantle a single bomb until they do.

And it had to be done. That was the one thing that finally compelled the Russians to sign a self-policing treaty and force their Chinese allies to do likewise. With atomic weapons already stacked like cordwood and Peiping boasting of a third hydrogen test, there wasn't much time left. This country will understand that eventually, he thought. I hope to God it doesn't take too long, but they'll understand.

President Jordan Lyman could lament the fickleness of public opinion, as this morning, and still retain his faith in the eventual soundness of collective public judgment. He had thought it out often during a public career that ran from district attorney through state senator, state attorney general and governor to the White House. Question: How do you know that the electorate will wisely exercise the power it is given in this republic? Answer: You don't-but it always has, in the long run. Lyman's wrestle with the problem was no matter of past decades, either. Even now the windows of his study were lighted late on many nights while he sat inside, feet propped up, shoulders pushed back in an easy chair, reading anything that bore on the American government, from Jefferson's letters to Eisenhower's press conferences. He rarely went back from his office to the mansion at night without picking a volume off the shelves in the Cabinet room that held the writings of the Presidents. Most people took the American system for granted even while they proclaimed its perfection. Lyman pondered it, questioned it, wondered about it, and so knew why it worked so well.

The intellectual curiosity that led Lyman into this long study, and the knowledge gained from it, also gave him a poise and balance that served him well now. He could lose his temper, but he never made an important decision when he was angry. He would weigh the pros and cons of an issue until his aides were in despair, then make up his mind and never waver again. Yet even as he stayed on a course so carefully charted, Lyman could always make himself see the other side. This was not modesty but breadth of understanding, although it did not always seem so. He would candidly concede, for instance, that under certain circumstances General Scott or Secretary of the Treasury Christopher Todd, the "brain" of his Cabinet, might have made a better President than he. Lyman did not find it necessary to add, on such occasions, that under existing circumstances he was better fitted for the job than they. He knew it. Those who heard his remarks, however, sometimes wondered whether he was afflicted with self-doubt. Lyman, having thought it out, would have been willing to disabuse them of this notion if they had asked about it. But they did not, for the associates of the President of the United States do not voice such notions to him, and so the question lingered in their minds-and perhaps in the mind of the public too.

Certainly Lyman was a good deal more complex than one would guess from a glance at his record, a record of unbroken political triumphs in every election he ever entered and of consummate skill as well in the art of back-room politics. He obtained the presidential nomination by making a deal with the man who came to Chicago with the greatest number of first-ballot votes. Lyman, accompanied by Clark, simply took a back elevator to Vince Gianelli's room and told him he could not possibly win the nomination. Gianelli exploded indignantly, but Lyman, who of course had thought it all out before, explained the situation to Gianelli so precisely that the only remaining question was whether the New Yorker would accept second place on the ticket. He did, within the hour.

Lyman's race against President Edgar Frazier that year was never a contest. He won it at the very start with a single sentence in his speech accepting the nomination: "We will talk till eternity, but we'll never yield another inch of free soil, any place, any time." The Republicans could never overcome the public distaste for the Iranian War and the national revulsion against the partition that ended it. They privately derided the Lyman-Gianelli ticket as "The Cop and the Wop," trying to turn Lyman's pride in his Ohio law-enforcement record and Gianelli's ancestry against the two Democrats. The analysts guessed later that this whispered slur cost the G.O.P. more votes than it gained. The Democratic ticket carried all but seven states in the first real landslide since Eisenhower.

Yeah, Lyman thought, I carried forty-three states a year and a half ago. Now I'm trying to do something for all those people, and I don't think I could carry ten states today.

He walked into his lavatory, splashed cold water on his face, and wiped it dry.

"Listen, Lyman," he said aloud, "there's life in the old bird yet. You'll bring this thing off. You've got to. You can't let the world down."

There you go again, he thought, talking to yourself, trying to sound like the big shot. Knock it off, Jordie, you're making an ass of yourself.

Lyman went back to his desk and began reading the intelligence reports left for him by his military aide. A stranger seeing him now might have taken him for a college professor. At fifty-two, his rather long face was less wrinkled than seamed. His curly hair was thinning back from the temples and was streaked with occasional strands of gray. Although he had it trimmed weekly and kept at it with a comb, the hair had a wiry quality that made it appear perpetually tousled. Colorless plastic frames held his glasses on a prominent nose. He was not a tall man, standing an inch under six feet, but oversized hands and extremely big feet, appended to a rather thin body, gave him a gangling appearance. No one would call him handsome, but he looked like a man who could be trusted-and no politician could ask more of his own physique.

The President read and signed the stack of mail his secretary had left for him, holding out a couple of letters that weren't quite right so that he could dictate new versions. He was well into another pile of mail when Esther Townsend came in. She had come to work for him as his personal secretary when he was attorney general of Ohio, moved into the governor's office with him and inevitably accompanied him to the White House. No one else on his staff knew Jordan Lyman as well as this tall, blonde girl with the light-brown eyes and the wisp of hair falling over her forehead. She knew him so well that she rarely had to ask what to do with a problem. He knew her so well that he never had to worry about her judgment.

"The Vice-President is here," she said. "Do you want some more time to yourself?"

"No, thanks, Esther," he said, "I've done all the thinking that a man can stand in one day. Tell the kitchen they can bring lunch over here."

Over that lunch the two leaders commiserated on the evident ebb in the administration's popularity.

"I haven't sold the treaty to the country, Vince," Lyman said. "I've been too busy selling it to the Senate. But by the time you come back from Italy I'll have a plan. We'll work out of this, don't worry. We can. We have to, because we're right."

"I'm not faulting you, Mr. President. So Gallup puts us down. So what? It's one of those things. A couple of months from now, you'll be a hero."

"You'll be the hero this week, Vince. Home-town boy makes good." Lyman blew him a kiss, bravissimo. "Say, where'd you dream up that weekend in your grandfather's village? That's a great idea."

Gianelli beamed, winked and waved his arms, never missing a beat as his fork propelled meat loaf into his mouth. Lyman could never quite get over Gianelli's appetite and the haste with which he appeased it. But as Vince had once said: You want Ivy League manners, you should have picked someone from Princeton to run with you-and lost, maybe.

"I should take credit, but you know who cooked that one up? Prentice, that's who, I had it worked out to stop Saturday in Corniglio, you know, just run up on the way from here to there, make a little speech. So last Friday Prentice comes up to me in the cloakroom and says what am I going to do in the old country? And I give him a rundown. All of a sudden he sticks that finger in my face, the way he does, and gives me a big song and dance about tradition and sentiment and the Italo vote. He should tell me about that. But he says why not give the home-town thing a little more moxie and spend a couple of nights there? It's a natural if I ever heard one, no matter who thinks it up, so I buy it quick and yesterday the boys leak it to the papers."

"Prentice is sharp, all right," Lyman conceded dryly. "He made enough trouble for us over the treaty."

"Ah, he'll be okay when this simmers down some. I know, I'll never trust the bastard either, but an idea's an idea. Right?"

"Right, Vince. You going up to what's-its-name has real charm."

"Moxie," Gianelli corrected.

"Okay, moxie," Lyman agreed with a grin. "And moxie we can use right now."

Their talk drifted into small political gossip. Gianelli frequented the Senate cloakroom and the Speaker's rooms over in the House and he regularly brought Lyman an assortment of useful, if not always particularly elevated, nuggets of information. The Vice-President stowed away a pineapple sundae, patted his stomach, and rose to go.

"Cheer up, chief. From now on, things will start looking up." He waved from the door. "Arrivederci, Mr. President."

After he left General Scott's office, Casey concerned himself with strictly military matters in the strictly routine way with which he began each day. While the chairman conferred with Sir Harry Lancaster, Casey read methodically through the pile of messages, inquiries and receipts for orders that had accumulated since his relief from duty the day before. Selecting those that required Scott's attention, he added them to the Sunday stack and presented himself at the E-ring office shortly after the British Chief of Staff had left.

Scott, puffing on his first cigar of the day, was in good humor. Casey could almost feel himself basking in the General's radiance, as though he were standing on a beach in the first full heat of the morning sun. It was a rare man who, once within range of Scott's personality, failed to feel better for it.

"You look pretty chipper, Jiggs, for a man who had the Sunday duty."

"Marge and I stepped out last night, General. Pretty good party at the Dillards'. I think you've met him. He's Union Instruments' man here."

"Anybody I know there?" Scott asked.

"Yes, sir. Paul Girard from the White House and Senator Prentice, I guess, were the ranking guests."

Scott examined the thin column of cigar smoke wavering in the uncertain eddies of the air-conditioning currents. He chuckled.

"With those two," he said, "I'll bet there was a small go-round over the treaty. Prentice uphold our side all right?"

"He was pretty candid, sir. Also quite complimentary about you." Now, why this line of questions? Casey wondered. Scott must have covered all this last night with Prentice at his quarters.

Unsure of his ground, Casey turned to business.

"Here's the message file, General. And I wondered if you wouldn't want to invite a couple of Congressional people to observe the All Red, sir? It might not hurt us on the Hill if the leaders saw just how smoothly we can work when we have to."

Scott pressed his palms hard against his desk, fingers spread, the nails white where he pushed them against the wood. Casey had long ago noted the General's unconscious habit of flexing his hand muscles, sometimes clenching the fist, sometimes pressing on an object, often simply pushing the heels of the hands against each other.

He looked at Casey for a moment, then studied the ceiling briefly before he answered his question.

"No, Jiggs. I want to test our security as well as our readiness," he said. "Right now, nobody in Congress has a hint of it, and I want to see if we can keep it that way."

Casey was on the verge of blurting an objection- that Senator Prentice already knew about the alert. But, again remembering the odd meeting at Fort Myer last night, he decided not to.

Scott looked at his watch. "Time for the tank. Walk over with me, and then wait awhile. We may have some questions you can help us on."

"The tank" was the big conference room used by the Joint Chiefs. The name memorialized the depressing effect it had had on several generations of occupants. Pentagon wags described the furniture as "dismal brown," the rug as "disappointed mustard," and the walls as "tired turquoise." Although it was on the outer side of the building, the Venetian blinds were usually closed, further emphasizing the room's cheerless atmosphere. Between the windows a cluster of flags provided the sole touch of bright color. There were nine of them: the personal flag of each service chief and the standard of each of the four services, plus the chairman's own flag-a blue-and-white rectangle divided diagonally with two stars in each half and an American eagle, wearing a shield and clutching three gold arrows, in the center.

A changing array of wall maps lent the proper military tone to the room. Today, Casey noted, a map of the United States had been hung.

As Casey retired to a chair outside, the service chiefs arrived, one at a time, from their own offices.

First in was General Edward Dieffenbach, the stocky paratrooper who was Army chief of staff, wearing the black eyepatch that made him famous in Iran. He walked as if he also had on the jump boots with which he liked to emphasize his continuing rating as a qualified parachutist.

General Parker Hardesty, Air Force chief of staff, needed no such sartorial trademarks. His wavy brown hair and long cigar served the purpose equally effectively.

Next was General William ("Billy") Riley, commandant of the Marines, owner of the most innocent blue eyes and the most belligerent jaw in the military establishment. Unlike the others, who had only a nod for Casey, Riley paused and winked.

"Into the tank again for the Corps, Jiggs," he said. "Outnumbered as usual."

Scott appeared again, but only long enough to close the door. Wait a minute, General, Casey thought, you haven't got the Navy with you yet. But the meeting began and wore on, and there was no sign of Admiral Lawrence Palmer, the chief of Naval Operations. Scott must have known he wasn't coming.

The four chiefs met in private for twenty minutes. As they filed out, Scott beckoned Casey into the room and motioned him to a chair. Casey sat down in the "Air Force seat" just vacated by General Hardesty. Scott pressed his hands together and strode over to a window to raise the blind. Casey, tapping the big brown ashtray in front of Hardesty's place, squeezed his thumb against a crumpled ball of paper. He fingered it idly as Scott sat down and lit a fresh cigar.

"Jiggs," the General said, "Colonel Murdock told me you heard about our Preakness pool. As a personal favor, I'd appreciate it if you'd keep that to yourself."

Casey could not quite hide his surprise.

"Don't worry, sir," he said, grinning. "All I want is the right horse. Seriously, General, I always respect your personal messages."

"I trust you'll keep Admiral Barnswell's reply in confidence too."

"Of course, sir."

Scott cocked an eyebrow. "Rank has its privileges, Colonel, as you'll realize when you get your star." He smiled at Casey. "Which I hope won't be too long coming."

The reference to his career genuinely flustered Casey.

"Actually, General, I make it a point on the Sunday duty to limit myself to official traffic. I don't inquire about the chairman's personal messages, but this time-well, sir, the young jaygee in all-service radio is something of a gossip."

"So I've heard. Name's Hough, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

Back at his desk, Casey found he still had the little wad of paper from the conference table. He unfolded it absently as he mused on Scott's mention of a possible promotion for him. By the book, he wasn't due for consideration for another three years. By then there might not be so many stars to hand out, thanks to the disarmament treaty. At least that was the way a lot of hungry colonels around here had it figured. Better not waste a lot of time thinking about it.

Why such a flap about those Preakness messages? Scott seemed a little uneasy even talking about them. Casey couldn't remember the chairman's ever being on the defensive that way before. He flattened out the little piece of paper, which turned out to be a page from one of the memo pads on the chiefs' table.

Something was written on it, in pencil, in General Hardesty's scrawl. Casey squinted to make it out. It seemed to say: "Air lift ECOMCON 40 K-212s at Site Y by 0700 Sat. Chi, NY, LA. Utah?"

The K-212 was the newest of the military jet transports, big enough to handle a hundred troops in full battle dress with light support weapons. There was that queer ECOMCON thing again. Now, just what the hell is going on? Casey asked himself. That's Hardesty's writing, all right. Why would anyone need a big jet airlift for the Saturday alert? Casey felt strangely unsettled and a little irritated as he stuffed the paper into his pants pocket. Why is a whole operation being kept secret from the director of the Joint Staff, who is supposed to know everything?

On his way to lunch a couple of hours later, Casey met Dorsey Hough in the corridor. The bored look was gone from his sallow face. Instead, he wore a triumphant grin.

"Hey, Colonel, you know that transfer I was telling you about? Someone must have heard me talking. It came through a few minutes ago and it's good old Pearl for me."

He did a poor imitation of a hula twist and winked at Casey.

"And say, by the way, Big Barnsmell turned out to be the only party poop on the chairman's racing form. All the others came through with their IOU's."

He swaggered off down the hall, whistling "Sweet Leilani," without waiting for a reply., Good God, Casey thought, a man needs more than four hours' sleep to cope with the characters around this place. What a flatheaded flannelmouth that kid is. How does a man like that get cleared for code duty? Thank God the Japanese aren't threatening Pearl Harbor this semester.

In mid-afternoon, after delivering a folder of papers to Scott's secretary, Casey met another colonel- this one Army-as he was leaving the chairman's office. The two men all but collided head on in the doorway.

"Well, well, if it isn't my favorite jar-head himself," said the soldier, pulling Casey into the corridor and looking him up and down appraisingly.

"Hello, Broderick," Casey replied, trying to hide his distaste for the other man's use of an epithet that was generally intended to provoke a Marine to blows. "I thought you were in Okinawa, or maybe worse."

A heavy hand came down just a bit too hard on Casey's shoulder. "Not me, Jerome, not me."

Instantly the old dislike for this man came flooding back over Casey. Colonel John R. Broderick was as ugly a man as he knew. His eyebrows merged in a dark line over the bridge of his nose, a scar marked his right cheek, the backs of his hands were covered with thick black hair. Casey had seen Broderick's face contorted with contempt and had long ago decided this was the most arrogant officer he'd ever met.

They had fallen out the first time they had seen each other, in the officers' club at the Norfolk Naval Base during joint amphibious exercises years ago when Casey was in the basic officers' course at Quantico and Broderick was a new second John in the Army. They were standing at the long mahogany bar when Broderick made some sneering remark about the Marines. Casey suggested he hadn't meant it and when Broderick repeated his gibe, Casey invited him outside. Instead, Broderick swung at him right there and Casey swung back. Luckily two friends broke it up and there were no senior officers in the room.

Their paths crossed occasionally during the years, the last time in Iran, where Casey remembered Broderick, by then a Signal Corps battalion commander, growling that the country would never be worth a damn until we got a President "with enough iron in his spine to shut down the goddam Congress for a couple of years." Ironically, their wives met and became friendly while they were overseas, and Casey later suffered through a couple of strained social evenings while Broderick inveighed against the President, both parties, and politicians in general. A few months ago the Brodericks disappeared from Washington and Casey hadn't bothered to find out their whereabouts.

Somewhere along the line Broderick had learned that he could always rile Casey by using his middle name.

"Jerome, my boy," he said now, "I hear you're doing a fine job as director of the Joint Staff, a fine job."

Casey felt like swinging again. Not the least of Broderick's poisonous traits was his habit of saying everything twice, as though his listener were either deaf or a moron, or both.

"Where you stationed now, Broderick?"

"Uh . , . oh, no you don't, no you don't. I'm top secret, pal, all the way. Just in town for the day to report to the chairman." He nodded toward Scott's office and smiled condescendingly at Casey.

"Have it your own way, Broderick," Casey said. "You usually manage to, anyway."

"How right, Jerome, how right. See you around sometime,"

Casey was back at his desk a few minutes later, still irritated, when Marge called. She had just finished a round of golf at the Army-Navy Country Club and was about to pick up the boys at school.

"Jiggs," she asked, "who do you think I just saw in the clubhouse?"

"Abercrombie and Fitch."

"Monday's your bad day for jokes, honey. I saw Helen Broderick. Very mysterious, like Mata Hari. Wouldn't say what John's doing. Something very hush-hush down near Fort Bliss. Don't you know all the hush-hush things, dear?"

"Oh, sure," Casey said. At least I used to, he thought.

"Well, I'm dying to know. Sounds all hot and sandy and deliciously secret. What time will you be home tonight?"

"The usual, more or less, I guess. Say about six."

Casey toyed with a pencil on his desk. So Broderick is head of some secret command near Fort Bliss, eh? That checked with what Mutt Henderson was talking about yesterday. On a hunch, he fished out of his jacket pocket the paper Mutt had given him and dialed the number. Henderson answered.

"Hi, Mutt. Jiggs. Just checking on you. When you leaving?"

"In a couple of hours, after the C.O. gets through with Scott."

Casey kept his tone casual.

"Hope you get along better with Johnny Broderick than I do," he said. "The guy rubs me the wrong way."

"Yeah," Henderson said, "he takes a lot of getting used to. But he's one hell of a C.O., Jiggs. Our outfit really moves. The men don't like him, but they work their butts off for him anyway. Big morale man."

"Well, good luck, Mutt. Let us know next time you come up here."

My God, Casey thought as he hung up, Scott sure picked a fine Fascist son-of-a-bitch to run his ECOMCON-whatever that is.

Casey pulled the stack of papers out of his "in" box and doggedly set to work on them. He couldn't keep his mind on the job. The events of the past two days kept intruding on his concentration. Finally he gave up trying and just sat, wondering why he was so addled. Suddenly he got up, cleared his desk, locked his safe, and picked up his cap.

"Miss Hart," he said to his secretary, "call the car for me, please. I'm going home. If there's any flak, I'll be there."

His car was in the driveway when the Army chauffeur delivered Casey at his home. The boys were nowhere in evidence. He found Marge in the kitchen.

"It's only four o'clock, Jiggs," she said, startled. "Are you sick?"

He answered with an embrace whose vigor and duration were sufficient to convince her of his good health. He grinned at her when she wiggled loose.

"Nope, I'm doing fine," he said, "but I need to take the car for an errand. I won't be long."

He changed into slacks and sport shirt, then drove down to the Potomac and out the George Washington Parkway, past the fashionable homes on the bluffs, all the way to Great Falls. He parked and walked down along the dirt path to a rock ledge overlooking the cascades.

Casey sat on the rocks and watched the brown water of the Potomac careen over the falls, disappearing into dark eddies at the bottom, then bursting into new rapids. He watched this, but he did not really see it, for he was thinking.

Prentice talking about being "alert." Admiral Barns-well refusing to put up ten bucks for the chairman's betting pool. That bastard Broderick. ECOMCON. General Hardesty's crumpled memo: a big airlift to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and ... and maybe Utah. Why Utah? In fact, why an airlift? What was Site Y anyway? And why was Scott suddenly cutting him out of things? Bits and pieces from the past two days swirled in Casey's mind like the water at the foot of the falls. He struggled to sort them out. The Vice-President's trip, for some reason, kept intruding on his thoughts, but he was at a loss to know why. Casey again felt the uneasiness of Sunday morning and the anxiety that had kept him awake last night.

He sat by the falls and stared down at them, and he tried to make some sense of it.

Casey sat for almost an hour, oblivious of the strolling couples and the racketing children who passed him. Then he stood up, stretched, and walked slowly back along the path, his eyes on the ground.

He was still preoccupied as he drove along the river toward town. In Langley the sight of a telephone booth at the corner of a service station lot broke the spell.

Casey pulled off the road, dropped a dime into the coin box, and dialed.

"White House." The operator was simply stating a fact.

Casey took a deep breath, started to speak, then hesitated.

"White House?" The phrase had become a question.

"Paul Girard, please," said Casey, finding his voice.

"May I tell him who is calling?"

"Colonel Martin Casey."

"Just a minute, Colonel."

There was a delay of more than a minute before Girard came on.

"Jiggs, if you offer to buy me a drink, I'll cut your throat."

Casey had no answering wisecrack. "Paul," he said, "I want to see the President."

"Oh, fine," Girard scoffed. "What did you do when you got home last night? Pick up where I left off? You really must be flying by now."

"Paul," Casey repeated, "I want to see the President. No kidding."

"Sure. All you have to do is invent a forty-hour day and we can take care of you and everybody else too."

"Paul, I'm serious. I've got to see him."

Girard chuckled patronizingly. "Okay, pal. How about my saving you a few minutes the next time your boss comes over here? I'll slip you in afterwards if you can hang around."

"Uh-uh. I have to see him right away. Today."

For the first time there was the slightest hint of professional wariness in Girard's voice when he answered. "Today? Come on, Jiggs, what's this all about? Some hot-shot Pentagon business?"

"Paul, I can't talk to you about it now."

"You can tell your uncle Paul, Jiggs. These phone lines are okay."

"No, no, I don't mean that." Casey was sweating inside the stuffy phone booth, but the heat was not the cause. "I can't tell you about it, Paul. It's ... it's a national security matter."

Casey knew there was much defense information to which he had access but which was denied to Girard on the theory that he didn't need to know it. He hoped the phrase would be enough. It wasn't.

"Jesus, Jiggs, aren't you pretty far out of channels? How about doing it through Scott or the Secretary of Defense?"

"I can't, Paul."

Girard again chose to see the funny side. "Ah, I'm beginning to get it now," he bantered. "Looking for a backdoor promotion? Or are you after the chairman's job?"

Casey squeezed the phone hard.

"Paul, listen to me. Please. You know I'd tell you about this if I could. I'd like to. I think the President would, and will, but he's got to decide that. There are things involved that I'm sure you don't know about and it isn't up to me to tell them to you." He stopped.

"Go ahead, Jiggs." There was no jesting in Girard's voice now and Casey knew he had broken through.

"I said it was a national security matter. What I really mean is, it involves the ... the security of the government. The President has to know about it as soon as possible."

Girard was silent for what seemed to Casey like half an hour. Then he spoke again, all business.

"Well, how about tomorrow morning? I can fit you in at eight-thirty."

"That'll be twelve hours wasted," Casey said. "Besides, I can only come at night."

"Oh." There was another pause. Then: "Hang on, Jiggs. Let me talk to The Man and see what I can do."

Casey loosened his shirt, pushed the door of the booth open a foot or so, and lit a cigarette. It was half gone when Girard's voice came through the phone again.

"Okay, Jiggs. Be here at eight-thirty sharp tonight. Come in the east entrance. I'll be waiting for you. And I sure hope it's as important as you said, because the President hates any nighttime stuff."

"Thanks, Paul," said Casey. "It's important. And Paul, tell the President all you know about me. He's got to hear me out."