Acts of Mercy

Two

In the executive restroom down the hall from the Oval Office, Maxwell Harper was drying his hands on a towel when the door opened and the President’s favorite bodyguard stepped inside. He turned as the man, Justice, said, “Oh, good morning, Mr. Harper.”

“Justice.”

Harper watched him cross to one of the urinals, stand there in a stiff, almost military posture of attention. He wondered with dry humor if the Secret Service indoctrinated its men to urinate that way. They were a regimented lot, in any case, and while Harper felt little common ground with any of them-they were like bland sticks of furniture: necessary, functional, unobtrusive-he admitted to an admiration for their unshakable control. He was a controlled man himself; he believed that absolute control, at all times, in all circumstances, was the key to success. It had been the key to his own success, certainly: his rise from political science professor at Harvard to the Wilson chair at Northwestern to Nicholas Augustine’s foremost advisor on domestic affairs.

When Justice had finished at the urinal he came over to the row of washbasins, one removed from where Harper stood, and began to soap his hands. Harper studied him as he replaced the towel on its rack. Nondescript; average height, average weight, brown hair and brown eyes, no distinguishing features or marks. A cipher in every respect. He knew that the President had been spending a considerable amount of time with the man lately, discussing God knew what as if they were intimate friends, and he wished he understood what it was about Justice that inspired this confidence. That fawning deference of his, perhaps; Augustine had always had a weakness for people who told him he was right, strong, a great leader.

Harper said, “Have you talked to the President this morning, Justice?”

Justice straightened, as if coming to attention. “Yes sir,” he said. Colorless voice, too, full of servility. “I just left the Oval Office.”

“Did he say anything about the press conference yesterday?”

“Well, he feels people misunderstood his remark on Israel.”

“Of course. Which is exactly why he should not have made it.”

“Sir?”

“Suppose you were a Jew,” Harper said. “How would you feel about the President today?”

“I’m not a Jew, Mr. Harper.”

“Do you know any Jews?”

“Yes sir.”

“Have you talked to any of them this morning?”

“No sir.”

“Maybe you should, Justice. Maybe you should.”

Harper caught up his briefcase and went to the door. As he turned the knob he glanced back at Justice, saw him standing before the basin and frowning slightly into the mirror. An odd feeling of satisfaction touched Harper; he nodded once at Justice’s reflection and then opened the door and went out.

The President was on the telephone in the Oval Office; he waved Harper to one of the chairs before his desk. Harper took the closest of them, moving it so that it paralleled to the right corner, and listened for a moment to what Augustine was saying into the receiver. But it was nothing of significance: he was talking to Austin Briggs, the press secretary, about dinner that night, telling him to issue invitations to Attorney General and Mrs. Wexford and to congressional liaison Ed Dougherty.

Waiting, Harper noticed that the lines in Augustine’s face were deeply etched, that the skin of his neck had a loose, wattled appearance. He recalled his own image in the restroom mirror: carefully trimmed black mustache; romanesque nose, shrewd gray eyes, clear and unlined skin. We’re the same age, he thought, but he looks sixty-five and I look forty-five. He’s an old man, he’s grown into an old man.

Harper shifted his gaze to the desk, felt a faint distaste at the disorganized spread of papers there. The framed photograph of the First Lady in her inaugural gown caught his attention then, and in spite of himself he let his eyes linger on it. She was one of the most beautiful and alluring women he had ever known; even in that photograph she radiated an aura of restrained sensuality that was unmistakable. Fortytwo years old now-and married to a fifty-six-year-old man who looked sixty-five and who was starting to flounder in office, perhaps seriously. Was Augustine starting to flounder elsewhere as well, in his private relations with Claire…?

Harper dug his nails into his palms, pulled his head away from the photograph. Claire Augustine was the wife of the President; it was indecent, and foolish and pointless, to think of her in any sort of intimate way. Strict control; at all times, in all circumstances, strict control.

Augustine finally said good-bye to Briggs and replaced the telephone handset. Then he reached across the desk for one of a dozen pipes in a circular rack, put it between his teeth without filling it, and immediately picked up and began fondling one of the railroad collectibles that cluttered his desk and the office. Railroadiana, Augustine called them. Harper had always considered the President’s passion for trains to be a childish and undignified hobby; but then, that same passion had apparently endeared him to the electorate during his campaign for the presidency. It was generally conceded among political experts that Augustine’s use of his privately owned train, the California Special (since redubbed the Presidential Special, of course) to conduct an anachronistic cross-country whistle-stop campaign, the first national politician to do so since Harry Truman in 1948, had won him as many grass-roots votes as his “New America” platform.

“All right, Maxwell,” the President said at length, “I suppose you’re going to jump on me like everybody else.”

“I have no intention of jumping on you,” Harper said. “I think you made a mistake yesterday and I think you had better take steps to rectify it, but that’s all I’m going to say. My area of expertise, after all, is domestic affairs.”

“So it is.”

“Did you read those briefs?”

“Briefs?” Augustine replaced the railroad collectible and folded his hands in front of him. “You mean the Indian situation in Montana?”

“Of course that’s what I mean.”

“I glanced at them, yes.”

“Glanced at them? Nicholas, this is a serious domestic issue,” Harper said, and he could not quite keep the exasperation out of his voice. “And in less than an hour you have a meeting with Governor Hendricks and Walter Sandcrane and Leo Wade from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”

“Sandcrane? Oh yes, the Indian spokesman. Well, don’t worry about it, Maxwell. I can handle the arbitration. There won’t be any Indian takeover of the Crow reservations in Montana.”

“Cheyenne,” Harper said. “For God’s sake, it’s the Cheyenne who are threatening to take over their reservations.”

“All right, yes, the Cheyenne.” Augustine leaned back, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again. “Do you have any idea how tired I am, Maxwell? How tired I really am?”

“We’re all tired these days,” Harper said. “But that doesn’t excuse a lack of preparation or errors in diplomacy.”

“Meaning Israel or the Indian problem?”

“Both, as a matter of fact.”

“I told you, I’ll handle things.”

Harper was silent.

“But then I’ve got to have a rest,” Augustine said, “even if it’s only for a few days. What I think we’ll do is go out to The Hollows at the end of the week. On Sunday.”

“Again? We were just out there ten days ago-”

“I know that, don’t you think I know that?”

“Nicholas, the media is already accusing you of spending a disproportionate amount of time in California. The Post editorial this morning-”

“To hell with the Post. The Western White House is the only place I can relax, you know that.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call The Hollows the Western White House,” Harper said. “It’s the same phrase Nixon used for San Clemente, as the press has been so fond of pointing out.”

Augustine made an impatient gesture. “It’s my ranch and I’ll call it any damned thing I please. The point is, I need another few days of relaxation, Maxwell; I need them. We’re going to The Hollows on Sunday and that’s all there is to it.”

Harper just looked at him. The Hollows again, he thought. Only a few days this time. Again. This time…