Acts of Mercy

Six

Harper rode awkwardly at the President’s side on the trail which angled across the valley meadowland to the northeast. Unused to horses, he was filled with the panicky intimation that at any moment the aged gelding would break from trot to canter and then into a full gallop, and that he would be pitched off to shatter a hipbone, fracture his skull, even break his back on the hard earth. He was aware of what had happened to jockeys such as Anthony DeSpirito and Jackie Westrope, not to mention the best of them all, Willie Shoemaker, who had been crushed by a highstrung filly and had lost a year of his career to traction and pain. If it could happen to Shoemaker, rider of six thousand winning races, it could happen to the effete Eastern intellectual Maxwell Harper.

He clung nervously to the reins, body tilted forward over the horse’s bobbing neck. Fifty yards ahead of them, the two Secret Service agents riding point (Augustine’s term, “riding point”; dialogue from a puerile Western movie, for God’s sake) were just entering the dense forest on the northeast slope; the other two agents trotted along thirty yards behind them. The giant redwoods and the mountain peaks loomed above, dark against the clear sky, and looking at them, Harper felt his stomach clench in agoraphobic reaction.

He wished that he had not agreed to come out riding with the President. But Augustine had been persuasive, and Harper had not felt strongly enough about it at the time to argue. It was an opportunity to talk to him, at least. Still, how could you discuss grave political matters with any degree of substance when you were jouncing along on the back of a damned horse?

Harper glanced at the President beside him: sitting erect in the saddle on Casey Jones, his big sleek bay, wearing riding boots and a fringed leather jacket and a broadbrimmed cowboy hat. Like LBJ at his Texas ranch, he thought disgustedly. Trying to prove to the end that he has his own natural element, playing the dual role of Rough Rider and country squire as though his administration wasn’t in a state of near-shambles. The Teddy Roosevelt syndrome.

As they followed the broad path upslope into the trees, Augustine gave him a faint smile and said, “You ride like a dude, Maxwell. Relax, sit up straight, grip the saddle with your knees.”

“I’m doing the best I can. I’m no horseman.”

“I’ll say not. You really should take lessons from one of the men.”

Lessons, Harper thought. We’re facing political annihilation and he sits there talking about riding lessons. “Nicholas,” he said, “did you call Saunders?”

“Claire took care of it, yes.”

“Why didn’t you do it yourself?”

“What difference does it make who called him? He’s been called, that’s all that matters.”

“All right. Did you prepare a statement yet?”

“Statement?”

“For the press when Wexford’s body is found.” Augustine did not say anything. They were into the woods now and it was cool and dark and quiet; the only sounds were bird calls, the creaking of saddle leather, the faint clopping of the horses’ hooves. The path, carpeted here with pine and redwood needles, had begun to hook to the north, still climbing. Eventually, Harper knew, it would come out of the heavy forest growth near the gorge through which the Yurok River ran, and then parallel the rim of the gorge to an area of high ground called Lookout Point. Augustine claimed the view from there was spectacular. Harper thought it was terrifying and found himself dreading the time they would spend there before turning back.

He said, “About that statement, Nicholas.”

Augustine sighed. “Yes,” he said, “I’m preparing a statement for the press.”

“I’d like to read it when you’re finished.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Why not? I think I have a right to be briefed in advance of what you’re going to say.”

“The statement concerns more than Julius Wexford,” the President said. “In fact, unless he’s found within the next eighteen hours, it will not concern him at all.”

“What kind of double-talk is that?”

“It isn’t double-talk, Maxwell.”

“No? Then please enlighten me.”

“I told you, I’m preparing a statement for the press. I’m going to deliver it tomorrow morning. I’ve asked Frank Tanaguchi to call a press conference for ten o’clock.”

Incredulously Harper said, “Press conference?”

“Yes.”

“What for, if not about Wexford?”

“You’ll find out tomorrow.”

“Good Christ, Nicholas-”

“I have my reasons for not wanting to talk about it beforehand,” Augustine said, and dug his heels lightly into the bay’s sides. Casey Jones broke into an immediate canter, hooves kicking up small puffs of dust and needles-and in instant consort the gelding surged to match its pace. Harper made a small involuntary cry; panic cut at him again as the muscles rippling along the gelding’s back caused the saddle to roll sharply beneath him. He threw his arms around its neck, clinging desperately, his buttocks jarring with small painful thuds against the hard leather seat.

Augustine maintained the trot for more than a minute, until the trees thinned and the trail emerged near the rocky shoulder of the gorge. Harper could hear the muted rumble of the river, and in terror imagined the horse stumbling, rearing, flinging him out of the saddle and across the ground and over the edge. But then Augustine reined the bay back to a slow walk, and the gelding immediately responded in kind. Making wheezing, snorting sounds through vented nostrils, it walked up beside Casey Jones again.

Harper straightened in the saddle, his breath coming rapidly, and caught onto the pommel to steady himself. He saw Augustine looking at him with thin amusement, felt his face flame. He resisted the need to rub at his smarting buttocks and recaptured his dignity by fixing the President with an angry glare.

“What are you trying to do to me?” he said. “You know I can’t handle a horse when it starts to run.”

“That was hardly a run, Maxwell,” Augustine said mildly. “Just a brisk uphill trot.”

“I could have been killed.”

“Oh, nonsense. Even if you’d fallen off you wouldn’t have hurt anything except your pride.”

The President urged Casey Jones into a faster walk, giving Harper no opportunity to reply. The gelding lifted its head, still snorting, but this time-to Harper’s relief-it did not follow suit; it lowered its head again, as if to say “The hell with it,” and continued to plod upward. The bay moved out to a four-length lead, climbing to Lookout Point where the two point-riding Secret Service agents waited.

The high ground there was flat and grassy, backed by a sheer granite wall, bordered on its other sides by forest and the deep river gorge. Across the gorge the wooded slopes fell away steeply to the northeast, so that you could see a series of small grassland hollows and ridges stretching for miles to the base of a broad, almost perpendicular peak. When Augustine reached Lookout Point he dismounted, dropped Casey Jones’s reins, and walked over near the precipice. One of the agents called out to him to be careful. He nodded, waved at the man in a dismissive way; then he stood with his hands clasped at his back, staring out at the distant valleys.

The gelding struggled up the last few yards to the high ground and stopped without Harper having to draw rein and immediately began to graze. He dismounted with awkward care, aware of the eyes of the agents, and flexed his cramped legs and hips. The air up here was thin; it made him feel vaguely light-headed as he crossed toward Augustine in hesitant strides.

He stopped five feet short of where the President stood because the jagged walls of the gorge were visible and his perspective of the sheer drop to where the river raged below-more than two hundred feet-made his stomach churn sourly. Looking at the view to the northeast was no better; he focused his attention on Augustine and kept it there.

The President glanced around at him. “Magnificent sight, isn’t it.”

“If you say so.”

“Like one of those rare dreams,” Augustine said, “where everything is beauty and peace.” His eyes were bright, as distant as the valleys. “The Hollows has always seemed that way to me, you know.”

Harper said, “Nicholas-”

“When my father was alive, we had two thousand head of cattle out there. Did I ever tell you that, Maxwell? Two thousand head of the finest Herefords and Aberdeen Angus in the world. The Hollows was a working ranch in those days. But it got to be too expensive to maintain the herd, and when we lost a couple hundred head during a disastrous winter I decided to sell it off. It’s odd, but looking out there I can almost see the ghosts of those lost cattle-red-and-white and black ghosts grazing in the valleys.”

God, Harper thought. He said, “Why did you call a press conference for tomorrow morning?”

“What?”

“I said, why did you call a press conference?”

Augustine released an audible breath. The brightness in his eyes seemed to dull, and he blinked. “And I told you,” he said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m entitled to know.”

“Are you? I think not.”

“Does it have something to do with Israel? With Oberdorfer? With domestic issues? With your campaign?”

“It has something to do with everything,” Augustine said. There was a sudden sharpness in his voice. “Now that’s all I’m going to say. I’m the President, Maxwell; I’ll thank you to remember that.” And he turned back to the gorge and his view of the valleys and the ghosts of his vanished cattle.

Harper realized his hands were clenched, flattened them out again. When he pivoted himself he saw the Secret Service bodyguards, all four of them present now, staring over at him and at the President with blank Justice-like faces. He ignored them, walked stiff-backed to where a fallen log formed a bench at the far end of the clearing. He sat on the log and tried not to look at Augustine standing at the rim of the gorge. And kept looking at him in spite of himself.

Press conference, he thought.

Secrecy, he thought.

Christ!