Acts of Mercy

Eight

Justice entered the dining car a few minutes before eight and took a seat at an empty table at the far end. The car was less than half full, mostly with staff aides and a few Secret Servicemen; white-jacketed waiters glided along the center aisle, balancing trays and silver ice buckets and bottles of California wine. Conversation was muted, and there was none of the relaxed camaraderie, the easy laughter, which normally prevailed at dinnertime on the Presidential Special. The faces of the diners were as sober as they had been on the flight from Washington; it was obvious that each of them, too, was deeply concerned about the negative trend of recent events.

A pitcher of ice water stood on the table. Justice poured some into a glass, drank a little of it and then opened the menu that lay across the place setting in front of him. Crabmeat cocktail, Crenshaw melon, liver pate; roast beef, abalone steak, chicken baked in wine sauce; salad and vegetables; strawberries in cream or three different kinds of cheese. A good selection-but none of it appealed to him. He closed the menu again, put it aside. He was simply not hungry.

When a waiter appeared beside him Justice ordered a cup of coffee. Then he sat staring out the near window. Green and brown farmland now; fields of alfalfa and lettuce and tomatoes. The sun had dipped behind the mountains of the Coastal Range, and the sky was suffused with a fading brick-red glow that turned scattered cloud wisps into stark luminous streaks, like designs in an abstract painting. But it all had a hypnotic effect on him, as had the scenery he’d observed from his compartment window, and when he felt his thoughts turning introspective again he shook himself and looked away.

The waiter arrived with his coffee. There was nothing to hold his attention while he drank it, and after a time he lifted the copy of Murder on the Calais Coach that he had brought with him and tried once more to read.

He had managed to absorb two full pages when he sensed someone standing close by, watching him. He glanced up, and it was Maxwell Harper.

Harper wore a sardonic expression, and his eyes were as hard and shiny as polished opals. He stood in the aisle with arms akimbo, swaying slightly to the motion of the train. “Hello, Justice,” he said. “Mind if I join you?”

Reluctantly Justice said, “No sir, not at all.”

Harper sat down across from him. A waiter appeared immediately, but Harper gestured him away and watched as Justice closed the book and laid it to one side of his cup. “A mystery story,” he said. “I might have known that was the kind of thing you’d read.”

“Sir?”

“Oh, no offense,” Harper said neutrally. “Lots of people read them. The President himself, as long as they have railroad backgrounds. Like Roosevelt with pulp westerns and Kennedy with James Bond spy novels.”

“Yes sir.”

Harper shrugged. “Personally I find popular fiction dull and totally lacking in literary merit and intelligent ideas. A soporific rather than a stimulant.”

Justice said nothing.

“How do you feel about it?” Harper asked.

“Sir?”

“Popular fiction. Do you think it has literary merit?”

“I really couldn’t say. I don’t know much about things like that.”

“Well do you find mysteries intellectually stimulating?”

“Sometimes. Mostly I read them for entertainment.”

“So you have no real opinion on them.”

“No.”

Harper folded his arms on the table and leaned against them. “Just what do you have opinions on, Justice? You can’t be as dull-witted as that face of yours indicates.”

Justice wondered if all of this was intended as some sort of sly game: the intellectual feeding his ego by putting down someone he obviously considered to be inferior. Or was there more to it than that? He had been aware for some time that Harper felt a certain hostility toward him, though he could never quite understand why. Maybe this was Harper’s way of working out his frustrations and aggressions. At any rate, Justice decided he could endure it; Harper was close to the President, a trusted advisor, and that was all that really mattered.

“Well?” Harper said.

“I guess I don’t have many opinions at all, Mr. Harper.”

“Not even on political matters?”

“No sir.”

“Oh come now. You must have views on the current situation-Briggs, Oberdorfer, Wexford, the press reaction to the President’s comments on Israel and the Vice-President.”

“My views are the President’s views,” Justice said.

“Just a member of the flock following his shepherd.” Harper’s expression grew even more sardonic. “All right, I’ll accept that. But what about some of the issues of the day? The balance of power, for instance. Do you think there has been a reconstitution of the essential power structure preceding the Second World War with the ex-post facto difference that Israel may now ironically be said to be in the position of the Axis powers? By which I mean, disregarding ideology and spiritual mysticism, that Israel is in effect holding the world hostage to the possibility of violence on an ever-larger scale. Is that how you see it, Justice?”

Justice blinked at him. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“No? Well, perhaps you feel that there has been an irreparable shift in all power relationships, that they must be exposed to entirely different definitions. In that case we are not talking about culture lag but culture shock, the distinguished theories of Emile Durkheim notwithstanding. Is cultural lag being obliterated? Or simply reaugmented?”

“Mr. Harper,” Justice said, “I just don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“No, I can see you don’t, at that. Well suppose we try something a little less complex and more to the point.”

“Point of what, sir?”

“Julius Wexford,” Harper said.

“stir?”

“Why the blank look? Don’t tell me you haven’t talked to the President in the past couple of hours? I was under the impression he discussed everything of any consequence with you lately.”

Justice said, “I haven’t talked to him at all since we boarded the train,” and then frowned and asked, “Has something happened, Mr. Harper?”

“Certainly something has happened. The President and Wexford had a confrontation earlier this afternoon.”

Justice was momentarily confused. “You mean here, on the Presidential Special? I thought Mr. Wexford was in Saint Louis…”

“So did we all,” Harper said. “The fact is, he came on behalf of the National Committee-to demand the President’s resignation.”

Stunned, Justice said, “Resignation?”

“You heard me; I don’t need to repeat myself.”

“But why?”

“That should be obvious even to you,” Harper said. “They’re afraid he has lost enough credibility to destroy the party at the polls in November; they want to sweep him out so they can quote reestablish public faith unquote and elect Peter Kineen in his place.”

“Mr. Wexford said this to the President?”

“That, and a great deal more. Augustine believes him to be the guiding force behind the movement against him. Along with Kineen, of course.”

“Then he didn’t agree to the demand-?”

“Of course not. He intends to fight; he still believes he can win renomination.”

“Can he?” Justice asked softly.

“It hardly looks promising. The National Committee plans to mount an all-out campaign for Kineen’s nomination, which means there will be strong in-party attacks on the President as well as vicious opposition attacks. His credibility is liable to plummet even further, and if that happens even his staunchest backers will abandon him for fear of losing their jobs to Kineen partisans. And those of us who are too deeply committed to the President to effectively switch sides will suffer even more; the party will excommunicate us, we’ll never work in government again at a national or even a state level.”

Justice felt cold. “Isn’t there anything that can be done, Mr. Harper? Isn’t there any way to make Mr. Wexford and the National Committee reconsider?”

“That, Justice,” Harper said, “is a damned good question. The question, in fact.”

“Sir?”

“It’s the reason I’m here talking to you.”

“I don’t understand…”

“For Christ’s sake, are you really as dense as all that? I’ve been sitting in my compartment for the past three hours trying to come up with a solution, a plan, a viable countermeasure. Much as it pains me to admit it, I’m stymied. And the reason for that may be that I attack a problem from the intellectual point of view and what is needed here is a more direct and basic approach. Do you understand now?”

“You want my help?” Justice said, astonished.

“I want an opinion from you, damn it.” Anger-or maybe a kind of self-deprecating embarrassment-shone in Harper’s eyes. “Come on, Justice, you’re as involved in this as I am; the President has seen to that. Tell me what the common man, the man of action, thinks ought to be done.”

Justice shook his head. He understood just how grave the situation must be for a proud, aloof genius such as Harper to come seeking help from someone such as himself. But he had no alternative answers to offer; his mind was as blank in this moment as an erased slateboard. “I don’t know, sir,” he said. “I just… I don’t know.”

Harper gave him a look of disgust, got abruptly to his feet. “Behold the common man, the product of two centuries of struggle and pain since the French Revolution-totally incapable of creative thought or action.”

“I want to help, Mr. Harper,” Justice said, “but I don’t know how. I’m not a thinker or a planner, I’m just a man who follows orders-”

But Harper had already turned and was walking away.