Acts of Mercy

Eleven

Restless, unable to sleep, Harper paced the floor of his compartment in small widening circles, returning to the center of the room when the circles increased enough to bring him up against walls and furnishings. He tended to do that when he was brooding, perhaps because it was an objective correlative for the way in which his mind worked: begin at the center, forage outward from a central idea or conception.

But the pacing did him little more good now than it had earlier. He still could not come up with an effective strategy for counteracting the crisis. And he still could not find answers to the hidden aspects of it, to the strange behavior of Claire and the reticence of the President.

He berated himself again, yet again, for going to Justice and humbling himself in front of the man. It had been a foolish error in judgment, a lapse in the strict control by which he lived and functioned. He had succeeded in doing nothing except demean himself. How could he have thought that a cipher like Justice could contribute anything in the way of positive action if he himself could not?

Well, it was a measure of his frustration and his apprehension, he supposed. Apprehension not only for Augustine but for himself; his career was as much on the line as was the President’s.

His career. A doctorate in political science from Harvard, four years at the Institute of Policy Studies, twelve years on the faculty at Harvard and then the Wilson chair at Northwestern, the Pulitzer Prize nomination for his biography of Millard Fillmore, and finally his appointment as domestic affairs advisor. No small accomplishments, any of these. And yet he had always considered his greatest achievements to lie ahead of him: the contributions he would eventually make, not only politically but to history and to American letters, would be the true realization of his capabilities.

But now it seemed probable that his future held little more than bitter unfulfillment and the relative anonymity of the vanquished. That he would be overtaken by that very history which should have enshrined him. And all because he had made the one fatal error of tying himself too tightly to a man he had believed strong but who had turned out to be weak. And vulnerable.

The unfairness of it was galling.

And I can’t let it happen, he told himself grimly. I must not let it happen. In that sense he was like Augustine: unable to give up, unable under any circumstances to passively accept defeat. It was a matter of honor and dignity and pride, a matter of utter belief in the rightness of himself and his role in the power structure of government.

So he would fight. He would stand behind the President and fight, and maybe, just maybe, they could win the struggle. Would win it, had to win it. There had to be ways to find answers to muddled equations, ways to turn things around.

Harper stopped pacing, stood listening to the rumbling clatter of the train. The compartment was beginning to have a claustrophobic effect on him, he realized; it preyed on his senses, made him irritable and dulled his thought processes. And perhaps he was spending too much time alone in here; perhaps he ought to get out and do something instead of pacing around and thinking about something to do. Talk to the President again? No, not tonight. Tomorrow would be better, after Augustine had had a night’s sleep and was more alert and less inclined to be emotional.

Talk to Wexford?

Yes, he thought, Wexford. A calm, rational discussion. Find out just how strong party sentiment was against the President; find out if there were any compromises that could be made. Find some sort of direction. That was what he should have done in the first place, for God’s sake, instead of stupidly seeking out Justice.

Quickly Harper left the compartment and went in search of the attorney general.