Line of Succession

Tuesday, January 18

6:30 A.M. North African Time Someone was shaking Peggy by the shoulder. “Go down and get him ready.”

She sat up. Squeezed her eyes tight shut and popped them open. “God I’m tired.”

“Pot of coffee over there. Take it down with you — he might need some.” As she struggled to her feet Sturka was adding, “He must talk this time, Peggy.”

“If he’s not dead.” The anger was returning.

“He’s not dead,” Sturka said with a kind of disgusted patience. “Alvin has been sitting up with him.”

She took the coffee down to the cell. Alvin nodded to her. Fairlie was on his back, flat out on the cot, asprawl and asleep, his chest rising and falling very slowly.

“Wake up please.” Her professional nurse voice. She touched his cheek — gray and cool, an unhealthy pallor. Respiration still low, she noted clinically. The pulse was slow but not terribly weak.

His eyes fluttered, opened. She gave him a few moments to absorb his surroundings. “Can you sit up?”

He sat up without help. She studied his face. “How do you feel this morning?” Echoes of the tutor in nursing school: And how do we feel this morning? An infuriating chirp.

“Logy,” Fairlie was mumbling. He was making strange faces, popping his eyes, rolling them around, grimacing — trying to clear his head.

Cesar appeared in his robes carrying a plate of food. She spent twenty minutes forcing Fairlie to eat and pouring coffee down him. He consumed everything obediently but without appetite and he chewed very slowly and sometimes seemed to forget to swallow.

At seven o’clock Sturka entered with the tape recorder. “All ready now?”

But Fairlie hadn’t even glanced to see who had entered. He’s still out of it, she thought. Too far out of it to put on the performance Sturka wanted?

She waited in growing fear: she didn’t know what Sturka would do if it didn’t work. To Fairlie, or to her. The past few days Sturka had let his anger show through. She had never seen that before; he had always been emotionless; now the strain was showing and Sturka had begun to slip. She caught the edge of his feelings once in a while and the intense force was alarming. It was a chill that came off him like death.

Sturka switched on the machine. Cesar sat on the corner of the bunk holding the microphone where it would pick up Fairlie’s voice. This time there wouldn’t be any editing; they wanted the pigs to know it was no trick this time, that Fairlie was talking without revisions.

They had spent a long time working out the wording. There had to be topical references to prove the tape had been made recently.

It was a fairly long speech because it contained detailed instructions for the release of the Washington Seven. Fairlie would have to read the whole thing cohesively. If his voice sounded weary and low that was all right but he couldn’t stumble over every other word.

Sturka put his hand under Fairlie’s chin and lifted his head sharply. “Listen to me. We’ve got something for you to read aloud. Another speech like last time. You remember last time?”

“... Yes.”

“Then just do it. When you’ve done it you can go back to sleep. You’d like that wouldn’t you — to go back to sleep?”

Fairlie blinked rapidly; it was as much of an affirmative as anyone needed. Sturka became harsh: “But if you don’t read this for us we’ll keep you awake until you do. You’ve heard of what happens to the minds of men who are prevented from sleeping for too long? They go completely insane. You know that?”

“...I know. I’ve heard that.”

His voice did sound better than it had last night. Peggy walked in relief to the front corner, out of the way.

Sturka held the paper out to Fairlie — a long yellow ruled sheet from a legal pad.

“Read this aloud. That’s all you have to do. Then you can sleep.”

Fairlie held it in his lap and frowned at it as if trying to focus his eyes on the hand lettering. A finger came down on the sheet. “What’s this? El Dzamiba?”

“El Djamila. It’s the name of a place.”

Fairlie tried to sit up but it seemed to require too much effort. He sagged back against the wall and held the speech up, squinting at it. Cesar moved the microphone closer.

“When should I start?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Fairlie’s eyes wandered over the sheet. “What’s this about Dexter Ethridge — and this about Milton Luke?”

“It’s all true. They’re dead.”

“My God,” Fairlie whispered.

The shock of that seemed to bring him around. He sat up again and maintained the position this time. “They’re dead? How?”

“Ethridge seems to have died of natural causes,” Sturka lied. “Luke was killed by a bomb which blew up his limousine. Please don’t ask me who did it. I don’t know. As you can see it was none of us — we’re here, we’re not in Washington.”

“My God,” Fairlie muttered again. “Has it started then?”

“The revolution? If it hasn’t it’s about to.”

“What time is it? What day?”

“Tuesday. The eighteenth of January. It’s early morning. Who knows, if you cooperate promptly enough you may be home in time to be inaugurated. Or perhaps you’d rather just sleep a while. But you have to read this first.”

Fairlie was trying to grapple with it but he was too far under, too drowned by the resistance-destroying weight of the drugs. He picked up the yellow sheet and began to read in a listless monotone, eyelids drooping, voice wandering into whispers every once in a while:

“This... this is Clifford Fairlie speaking. I am very tired and under the influence of mild tranquilizers, which have been administered to me to insure that I don’t do any reckless things that might — uh — jeopardize my physical safety. That will explain the... sleepy sound of my voice. But I am in good health.

“Uh — I have been informed of... deaths of Vice-President-elect Dexter Ethridge and Speaker Luke, for which I am allowed to express... deepest personal anguish.

“The seven... political prisoners from Washington have been delivered to Geneva as instructed, and my captors have asked me to announce their further instructions now. The seven... prisoners are to be transported by air to Algiers. They are then to be transported to the town of El Dzam — El Djamila, where an automobile is to be provided for their use. They are to be told to drive south along the highway toward El Goléa until they are contacted.

“If any survillance — surveillance is detected, I am told I will not be released. Neither the Algerian Government nor any other government is to follow the prisoners or make any other effort to determine their whereabouts. The prisoners will be provided by my captors with fresh transportation out of Algeria, but before they are sent on they will be stripped and examined by X ray to insure that no electronic devices have been concealed in their clothes or on their bodies.

“If all conditions are met precisely, the seven prisoners will have forty-eight hours in which to disappear into asylum in a country that has not been identified to me.

“If there is no indication of betrayal on the part of the United States or any other government, I will be released twenty-four hours after the release of the seven prisoners.

“There is one final instruction. The seven prisoners are to be in their car leaving El Djamila at precisely six o’clock in the evening — that is eighteen hours by the European clock — on Thursday the twentieth of January. And I am told to repeat that any attempt to follow the prisoners’ car or to track it electronically will be detected and will result in my... death.”

7:45 A.M. EST “...defies the whole purpose of the Constitution,” Senator Fitzroy Grant said.

Satterthwaite was thinking of Woodrow Wilson’s phrase to describe the Senate: little group of willful men... He said, “That has a high moral tone, but would you still say the same thing if Howard Brewster happened to be a Republican?”

“Yes.” The Senate Minority Leader almost snapped it.

“Even though the alternative is Hollander?”

“You’re thinking in terms of immediate expediency, Bill. You always do. I’m thinking of the long haul. I don’t think we can jeopardize the whole meaning of the Constitution for the sake of a temporary crisis.”

“It won’t be temporary if Hollander gets to spend four years in the White House. It may be the most permanent thing that’s ever happened to this country. If you agree annihilation can be regarded as permanent.”

“Let’s leave out the sarcasms, shall we?” Grant’s voice beat rolling echoes around his office. Past Grant’s head through the window Satterthwaite could see the shell of the Capitol with snow on it. The building didn’t look much different on the outside from before the bombings. A few construction trailers drawn up against the East Portico, a larger number of guards than there had been a month ago. A bit of absurdity in that, since nobody was inside it except workmen.

Fitzroy Grant’s dewlappy face turned slightly and picked up some light from the window; his eyes looked sad. He ran a hand carefully over the neat wave in his white hair. “Look Bill, the majority will vote with you anyway. My vote won’t matter.”

“Then why not throw in with us?”

The deep slow velvet voice was only faintly ironic. “Call it principle if you like. I realize the truth can’t prevail against a false idea whose time has come. But I have to follow my own inclinations.”

“Can I ask at least for an abstention?”

“No. I’m going to vote against.”

“Even if you turn out to be the swing vote?”

“I’m not that low in the alphabet.”

“I’m backpedaling, you can see that. I’m not used to this kind of horsetrading. But it does seem to me there ought to be somewhere where we could meet on common ground. Some kind of compromise.”

Grant seemed to smile. “You’re not half bad at it, Bill. Don’t run yourself down as a politician.”

“Well I sure don’t seem to be getting anywhere with you.”

“Howard Brewster’s pushing too hard, Bill. Love me love my ideas. He’s put himself on the line — everything he’s ever been, everything he’s got. One throw of the dice. All right, I realize he’s feeling the heat. I don’t like Hollander either. But this arrogance from the White House — that’s what I can’t stand. Frankly I believe we can handle Hollander. Hamstring him. There are ways, if only Congress will show the gumption. Hollander’s less of a threat than Howard Brewster, to my mind — because if Brewster puts this over on the country it’ll be one more nail in the coffin of the republic. The Roman Caesars came to power by stealing it away from the Senate. Brewster’s trying to get Congress to reinstate him in an office he just got through losing in a popular election. It smacks of coup d’état to me. I’m afraid I simply haven’t got the conscience to back this move. That’s all there is to it.”

“Fitz, you talked to the President yesterday, and—”

“Let’s say the President talked to me.”

“—and you told him you couldn’t support him. But you agreed to keep the secret until he opened it up. Why?”

“My peculiar brand of personal loyalty I suppose. He made it personal. We’ve been friends for thirty years.”

“Then may I prevail on that friendship for at least this much — that you agree not to campaign actively against the President’s move?”

“By actively you mean publicly.”

“No. I mean privately as well. While the committee is getting ready to report out the bill will you agree not to perform any of that quiet arm-twisting you’re so famous for?”

Fitzroy Grant chuckled amiably. “Funny, I always thought it was Howard Brewster who was famous for that. What do you think you’re doing right now if not a little genteel arm-twisting?”

“I’d appreciate an answer.”

“Very well, I’ll give you one. But it requires a bit of a preamble. With me they always do.”

Satterthwaite thought of looking at his watch, thought better of it, waited. He was thinking of the hard-backed chairs over in the Executive Office Building that would be filled in an hour’s time by the rumps of two dozen congressional leaders, among whose number the President hoped Fitzroy Grant yet might appear.

“When you look out around you today,” Grant said, “you see nothing but the wreckage that’s been left by these incredible atrocities and outrages. To my mind that’s the inevitable result of our weakness as a people. The libertarian principles have obviously failed. For altogether too long we allowed these goons of the so-called New Left to spread sedition and terror. We stood by and listened while they boasted openly of the violence they were going to do us. Our well-intentioned lawmakers chose to call this treason ‘dissent’ while the goons were ambushing cops and plotting sabotage and laying the groundwork for insurrection right under our noses. Now it seems to me—”

“Fitz, you’re condemning an entire society with guilt by association. There’s no proof more than a handful of criminals had any part in these atrocities. Their leaders aren’t even Americans.”

“I’ve been hearing that until it’s come out my ears.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“It’s totally beside the point. The point is that a society is too permissive, too weak, and too open to further attacks when it allows such things to happen as we’ve seen happen in the past couple of weeks.”

“Yet the alternative is a kind of fascism. That’s what Hollander wants — it’s also what the radicals want.”

“Fascism’s a strange word, Bill. It used to mean something specific. It doesn’t any longer. It’s just an epithet we use to indicate hatred of our enemies. If this country’s in any real danger of being taken over by a fascist sort of movement I think that danger exists in the nature of Howard Brewster’s effort to bend the Constitution far more than it exists in the senile brain of a weak old man like Wendy Hollander. Hollander’s a fool and everybody can see that — that’s our means of defense against him.”

“Mussolini was a bit of a fool in his later years. It didn’t stop him from maintaining the stranglehold on his country.”

“Until they killed him.”

“You think we ought to kill Hollander then?”

“No. I suppose most of us have thought of it though. I’m sure Howard Brewster has.”

“It’s been mentioned.”

“Why do you suppose he rejected it, Bill?”

“Why do you reject it?”

“Because I’m not a murderer. But then I’m not bucking for a second term in the White House.”

“That’s slanderous, Senator.”

“I expect it is. There’s probably some truth in it, however.” Grant’s chin lifted. His head was silhouetted against the window and Satterthwaite had a poor view of his face but the eyes seemed to gleam out at him. “Bill, that speech I just gave you about the country’s lack of strength — about the permissiveness that allows these things to happen. Did that ring a bell with you?”

“Sure. I’ve heard a lot of people use those arguments. I half believe some of them myself.”

“Ever heard Howard Brewster talk that way?”

“On occasion.”

“I’m talking about recently. Within the past two or three days.”

“No.”

“Well I’ve got news for you, son. Those were almost the exact words he used when he talked to me yesterday in his office.”

“It makes sense,” Satterthwaite said, half defensively.

“Howard Brewster’s kind of sense, you mean. He’d naturally use that sort of conservative spiel with me because he wants my support. Is that what you think?”

“I think it’s possible he might have come on a bit strong in that direction for your benefit,” Satterthwaite said cautiously. “After all he wouldn’t want you to think he was going to be too soft on the radicals.”

“Because that might send me scooting right over into Wendy’s camp, is that it?”

“Something like that. Hell, we’re all adults here. Is that the first time anybody’s ever tried to reassure you that way?”

“Hardly. But there’s a strange thing about it when you think it over.”

“Is there?”

“Think about it, Bill. If he’s going to use the same hard line Hollander uses, then why pass over Hollander at all?” And a sudden lunge forward of the handsome senatorial chin. “Could it just be because Howard Brewster wants the satisfaction of stomping the radicals himself? Not to mention his ambition to stay in office four more years?”

“You just said he was a lifelong friend of yours. None of this sounds very friendly to me.”

“I’m not feeling too friendly. I stayed up most of the night thinking back on that conversation he had with me yesterday. A few things stuck in my craw. One advantage of knowing a man for thirty years is that you get to know the little signs he puts up when he’s just pulling your leg, when he’s planning to double-cross you, when he’s lying for your benefit. We all do it. If you’re a good enough poker player and you play opposite the same people for thirty years you ought to be able to figure out what it means when one of them wiggles his ears.”

“I’m not following this completely.”

“Bill, he wasn’t lying to me yesterday. I know all the signs. I may be one of the handful of living men who do, but I’ve known the President since the days when he didn’t know who sat on which side of the aisle. And I’m telling you the man has every intention of proceeding with measures that aren’t very much different from the ones Hollander means to employ. I’m sure he feels honestly that he’s got a better chance of putting it over on the country than Hollander has. Hollander’s a fool whatever he does; however much Howard Brewster may be disliked nobody faults his intelligence. He’s trying to sweet-talk the Congress of the United States into backing him and so he’s playing the public role of man of reason. But to me it’s like the Goldwater-Johnson contest in Sixty-four when Johnson stood on a peace platform and then went out and did all the things Goldwater had been stupid enough to announce he’d do if he got elected.”

There was a momentary silence. Grant was looking at Satterthwaite, unblinking. “He was telling me the truth, you see, but he wanted me to think he was lying. He tried to make it look like the standard logrolling we all do. But the sincerity showed through.”

“Why should he want you to think he was lying?”

“Because if there really wasn’t any difference between him and Wendy there was no reason for me to back him.”

“You honestly believe there’s no difference?”

“Howard Brewster has the capacity to make himself a demagogue in this country. Hollander doesn’t. That’s the salient difference, Bill. And that’s why I won’t abide by your request — his request.” Grant stood up. “I’m going to fight it publicly and privately, Bill. Every way I know how. I’ve already started — by giving you something to think about.”

Satterthwaite walked, almost in relief, to the door. Picked up his armed escort in the corridor and went out to the waiting gray Interagency Motor Pool sedan. On the way to the Executive Office Building he sat in the back seat and held his head as if it weighed half a ton.

Grant’s notions were insidious. It was true Brewster was bearing down hard. In essence his argument was “Aprés moi le déluge.”

According to Grant you had to extend that. You had to start from that premise and look at the, evidence and reach the conclusion that Brewster really meant “L’état c’est moi.”

Satterthwaite closed his eyes. Things were reeling.

He had never been less than intensely loyal. Even when arguing with Brewster he had always played the role of loyal opposition. He had never aligned himself with Brewster’s adversaries and he had never differed publicly with the President.

Suddenly he felt himself the man in the middle.

No, he decided abruptly.

It was a mark of his exhaustion that he had let Grant play on his uncertainties. It was ridiculous. Suppose it was true? It still left the choice: Brewster or Hollander. And the choice was still clear.

Satterthwaite had served Brewster long enough to know him. He had observed Hollander for an equal length of time and regardless of Brewster’s personal ambitions there really was no comparing the two men. Brewster had stature and conscience; Hollander had neither.

Satterthwaite left the car and headed for the caucus.

3:15 P.M. North African Time Lime sat in the bar drooling with drunken lechery, clumsily pawing the blonde. His cap was askew at an angle more precarious than rakish. “Hey innkeeper!” he roared at the top of an arrogant American tourist voice. The blonde gave him a blowsy loose smile but Lime wasn’t looking at her; he was rearing his head around angrily to locate the bartender, Binaud. “Hey let’s get these classes — glasses filled, what’s taking you so damn long?” A corner of his vision held Benyoussef Ben Krim crossing the front of the room from the door to the front end of the bar. A big man, fat but not yet obese, limping slightly.

The CIA agent Gilliams had sent the blonde on request and she had brought the Levi’s and loud Hawaiian shirt and the yachting cap with its golden anchor embroidered on the crown. Lime provided the rest: the appearance of a flabby dissipated American on a week’s holiday from a Saharan oil-company job.

Ben Krim caught Binaud’s eye and Lime saw Binaud’s careful one-inch nod. Ben Krim stood impatiently while Binaud mixed a drink.

Lime stood up, almost upsetting the chair; patted the blonde and lurched toward the door as if headed for the toilet attached to the outside of the building.

Ben Krim turned to go out the door and Lime managed to collide with him.

“Jesus.” Lime started to get angry and then had another look at the size and ferocity of Ben Krim; Lime’s face changed, he assumed a cowardly half smile. “Hey, look, I apologize. These freeways are murder aren’t they, hey? Good seein’ you old buddy.”

While he talked he was making drunken efforts to brush Ben Krim’s jacket smooth. The Arab stared at him with hooded disgust and Lime stumbled through the door, almost fell off the step, staggered around the corner and poured himself into the toilet chamber.

Through gaps in the boards he had a restricted view along the outside wall of the bar to the road, the pier, the boats and airplane beyond. He saw Ben Krim walk stolidly out onto the pier, putting most of his weight on his left leg, dragging the right foot along. After a moment Binaud appeared and followed Ben Krim onto the pier. A third man got out of a black Citroen 2CV that was drawn up at the near end of the dock and Binaud made a point of inspecting his pilot’s papers — Lime assumed that was what they were. Finally an envelope came out of Ben Krim’s pocket and Ben Krim counted out money. Binaud counted it too and then put it away in his pants, and ushered the two men down the pier ladder to the dinghy he kept tied up there. Ben Krim followed them down out of sight.

When Lime staggered out of the toilet they were rowing out to the Catalina. He gave them a casual glance and lumbered around to the front door of the bar. Tripped over the step and fell inside.

He picked himself up and stood in the shadows to watch Ben Krim and the pilot climb into the PBY, after which Binaud began to row back toward the pier. Lime walked to the table and removed the yachting cap, handed it to the blonde and said, “Thanks. You did fine.”

“Boy do you sober up fast.” She smiled and it was genuine this time; it made her look a lot better. “What was that all about anyway?”

“I needed an excuse to bump into him.”

“To pick his pocket?”

“Quite the reverse,” Lime said. He took two paces into the center of the room to look out through the door. The Catalina’s engines were coughing into life and he watched the big-winged plane cast off from its buoy and turn and taxi out on the water.

He followed Binaud into the cruiser’s forward cabin. Chad Hill and two agents sat drinking coffee. Hill was saying to Binaud, “You did very well.”

“May I have the money now?”

“Let him hold it,” Lime said. “Keep two men on him till this is wrapped up.” He looked at Hill’s camera. “Get some good face shots?”

“I think so.”

They might need to be able to identify Ben Krim’s pilot later on if things got murky. Lime hadn’t got a good look at the man. Too small and fair-skinned to be Corby, but then it wouldn’t have been Corby.

Hill put his cup down and yawned. “Time to get back to Algiers, I guess.”

The cars were concealed behind the bar. The two-way was blatting when they approached and Lime reached in to unsnap the mike and bring it to his mouth. “Lime here.”

“It’s Gilliams. Didn’t he get there yet?”

“He’s already taken off. Haven’t you got his bleeper signal?”

“It hasn’t moved an inch.”

“That’s the one on the boat. There were two of them. He took the plane.”

“I know. But the signals should have diverged if he’s moved. It’s still one signal. Standing still.” Gilliams’ voice came out of the dashboard speaker, poorly defined, heavy with crackling.

Hill said, “Oh shit. The one on the plane isn’t working then. It’s my fault — I should have tested them.”

Lime said into the mike without taking his eyes off Hill, “Gilliams, switch your triangulators over to seventeen hundred. One seven zero zero, got that?”

“One seven zero zero. Hang on a minute.”

Chad Hill’s puzzled eyes swiveled around to Lime.

Gilliams: “Right, we’ve got a pulse. It seems kind of weak though.”

“It’s pretty small and it’s inside the plane — it’s got a lot of metal around it. Is it strong enough to follow?”

“I guess it is if we stick fairly close to it.”

“Then get your aircraft moving.”

“They’re already moving.”

“All right. We’re coming into Algiers. Expect us in half an hour. Have the Lear jet standing by. Have you got cars and choppers at Bou Saada?”

“Yes sir. And the Early Birds. Waiting down there with those dart guns.”

‘I’ll see you in half an hour.” Lime hung the mike and turned to face Chad Hill. “Pick up the rest of the crew and tell them to follow us in the station wagon.”

Chad Hill said, “I’m sorry about the bleeper. But how’d you get that other one on the plane?”

“It’s not on the plane. It’s on Ben Krim,” Lime said. “It’s in his pocket.”

He went around the car and got into the passenger seat. Hill slid in very slowly, as if he weren’t sure the seat would support him.

The sun blasted down, the sand shot painful reflections against the eye. Green hills lifted above the beach. Lime sat back with his arms folded and his face closed up.

They were leaving two men on Binaud; the rest were getting into the station wagon and Chad Hill started the car and drove around the bar to the road.

Once, Hill stiffened, looking at something; Lime looked ahead and saw nothing but the curving road. Whatever it was Hill had identified it and dismissed it; he had relaxed now. He’s in better shape than I am, Lime thought; Lime hadn’t seen anything at all. His tired eyes stared out of a bottomless disgust.

They boarded the Lear jet to fly to Bou Saada, the “City of Happiness” on the Naïl Plateau. Gilliams’ radio direction finders — at Algiers, at El Goléa, and in an airborne tracking station orbiting behind Ben Krim’s Catalina — had the target on-screen and it was still moving when the Lear took off and climbed steeply to clear the coastal range. Lime had a one-to-four-million-scale Michelin map across his knees. It showed the whole of north Africa in enough detail to cover every potable waterhole, every jeep track and wadi and fort.

The fertile crowded Tell region lay south of the Atlas Mountains, forming a bulge against the arid plateaus that fell across hundreds of dusty miles toward the Sahara. Putting together what he knew about Julius Sturka and what he had learned about the radius of the Catalina’s previous flight, Lime studied the map and came to certain conclusions.

He could rule out the Sahara proper. The plane hadn’t gone that far when they’d used it to carry Fairlie. And the Sahara was less a hiding place than a trap — there were too few places to hide. Sturka might be in the outback but he wouldn’t be too far from avenues of flight. Somewhere down here in the bled within pragmatic distance of a decent road and a place to land and take off in an airplane if you had to. Bedouin country perhaps but not the Tuaregs’ desert. Possibly even a farm in the Tell.

The wadi Binaud had pinpointed — the riverbed oasis where he’d picked up the Catalina last week — was east of Ghardaïa and north of Ouargla: arid plains around there, like parts of Arizona and New Mexico — hardpan clay earth that supported boulders and scrub brush, the occasional stunted tree, enough broken ground and cut-banks to conceal armies. Sturka had operated there before with the efficiency of an Apache Indian war chief and he would feel comfortable there.

Lime kept remembering the number of times he had gone looking for Sturka in that country: looking but never finding.

He had one or two advantages now he hadn’t had then. Electronic surveillance had become more sophisticated. He didn’t have to function in quite so much secrecy now. And he had almost unlimited manpower to draw upon. Gilliams had pulled every CIA man in North Africa into it, from Dakar to Cairo. There was the crew Lime had brought with him and then there were the Early Birds — the A-team killer squads Satterthwaite had sent from Langley. Lime had insisted the Early Birds be armed, in addition to their normal issue, with tranquilizer-dart bullets obtained from a Kenyan game preserve. The darts were fired by standard rifle cartridges; the chemical was M-99, a morphine derivative. The tranquilizer would take effect almost instantly and render the victim unconscious for fifteen or twenty minutes. It was standard procedure in wild-game protection; whether it had ever been used before in a quasi-military operation Lime didn’t know and didn’t care.

The objective was to get Fairlie out alive; what happened to the kidnappers was secondary but they couldn’t afford to leave half a dozen corpses strewn across the Algerian landscape. Algiers wouldn’t stand still for that and a fair number of opportunistic capitals — Peking, Moscow, the Third World towns — would join in the condemnations. Rescuing a VIP was one thing, starting a pocket battle on foreign soil was another. If it happened, the United States would survive it as she had survived Laos and the Dominican Republic and dozens of others, but it was better to avoid it if you could.

Lime lacked interest in the complexities of international relations but Satterthwaite had made it fairly clear to him that a gaffe in Algeria might cost the United States the nuclear bases in Spain which both Brewster and Fairlie had been trying mightily to protect before all this idiocy had erupted. Spain was not a NATO member, never had been. Overt American arrogance in Algeria would be too close to home; Perez-Blasco would have to turn away from Washington and that was to be avoided. So it was better to use drugged darts than bullets.

He hoped they were somewhere in the bled. It would be so much easier without witnesses. If they were holed up in the middle of one of the towns there would be no way to make it neat.

The chief dilemma was how to get Fairlie away from them. If you attacked them frontally they would use him as a shield.

It had to be played by ear and at any rate he had to find them first.

When they landed at Bou Saada the Catalina was still in the air, still being tracked southward.

“West of El Meghaier,” the radio man explained to Lime. “Still maintaining altitude.”

Lime left the radio shack and walked across the tarmac to the little gathering of aircraft — the Lear, the charter turboprop with the CIA people aboard, the Early Birds’ helicopters.

Lime beckoned Gilliams over and showed him the map. “I think Ben Krim’s heading for the same wadi where Binaud picked up the plane last week. Now that Catalina cruises at about a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour. The Lear can do three times that speed. I want to be at that wadi before Ben Krim gets there. I’ll want half a dozen of the A-team men with me. The rest of you had better rendezvous at Touggourt and wait for word from me. Have you got a portable scrambler set?”

“Transceiver? There’s one in each helicopter.”

“Have one put aboard the Lear for me.”

“All right Mr. Lime. But what happens if you’re guessing wrong? You’re out there in some Godforsaken wadi.”

“If we don’t get there ahead of Ben Krim we’ve got no way to track his contact. There’s a town called Guerara about ten miles from the wadi — I’ll have to commandeer a car there.”

“If they’ve got one.” Gilliams looked dubious. “You know those bled towns. A camel and four jackasses.”

“Something else is worrying you. What?”

“Maybe your pilot can land that Lear down there and maybe he can’t. But there ain’t no for-real airplane runways around there. He’ll probably never take it off.”

“Then we’ve cost ourselves an airplane haven’t we.”

The killer boys were trooping on board the jet with their rifles and knapsacks. Lime collected Chad Hill and went up the boarding stairs. Somebody closed the door after them and as Lime was buckling into his seat he felt the engines begin to whine and vibrate.

The Lear had oil company markings and he hoped that would appease Sturka’s bunch if they saw it go by overhead. He had a strong feeling they were right down there somewhere — almost near enough to touch.

There was a road outside Guerara, a paved secondary road that went in an absolutely straight line across seventy miles of plateau to the main highway at Berriane. It made a fine landing strip for the Lear; they buzzed it once to make sure there was no traffic and the pilot set down easily on the pavement, wandering with a bit of wind drift because the road had a high crown.

The chief of the A-team unpacked the fold-up motorbike from the seemingly endless stockpile of gadgetry the CIA teams always carried, and went putt-putting off with an agent riding behind him on the fender, east toward Guerara, a palmtree-shadowed village a mile away. From the air they had spotted half a dozen vehicles there and Lime had specified two of them he wanted: a Land Rover and a truck.

Twenty minutes. The sun went down with a splash of color and the Land Rover came up over the rise into view. The truck was a two and one half ton Weyland with hooped canvas over its rear bed; it was war surplus — something Monty’s army had left behind in wreckage after El Alamein.

Lime didn’t ask the CIA chief how he had obtained the two vehicles and the CIA chief didn’t volunteer the information. His name was Orr, he was a wiry Texan with close-cropped iron-gray hair, and there wasn’t a doubt in the world he had once been in the paratroops or the Green Berets.

Lime spread the map on the hood of the Land Rover, on top of the spare tire, and talked for five minutes. Orr listened and nodded. When Lime got into the Land Rover with one of the agents for a driver, Orr gathered the rest of his men in the truck and they set out eastward in close-formation convoy. In the road behind them the Lear was taxiing off to the side to wait in case Lime needed it again.

They drove through the village and the stares of Arabs followed them until they were beyond the palms. Lime twisted around in the seat to crank up the battery-powered scrambler transceiver they had manhandled off the plane. It took him three or four minutes to make contact.

“Gilliams?”

“Yes sir, sir.” Gilliams sounded in good spirits.

“He still in the air?”

“Yes sir he sure is. Starting his descent just a few minutes ago. Right where you guessed he’d go.”

“We’re on the ground. It should take us ten minutes or so to get there, another five or ten minutes to get in position. Have we got enough time?”

“I imagine you have. He’s still got thirty-five miles to cover and it’ll take him some time to feel his way down. It’ll be dusk by then, pret’ near dark. I doubt he’ll have much by way of landing lights.”

“A pair of headlights I imagine,” Lime said. “Don’t make any more calls on this frequency until I get back to you.”

“Step it up a little,” he told the driver.

“Can I use the headlights?”

“God no.”

Lime and Orr were belly-down in the brush along the wadi bank when the PBY came lumbering down onto the piste, the jeep dirt track that ran alongside the dry river. A car sat in the road with its headlights stabbing forward; Ben Krim’s pilot was guiding by the headlights but it was a tricky maneuver because the closer he got to the ground the more blinding the headlights would be in his eyes. But the pilot would be good. Sturka used only experts.

Two of Orr’s commandos had slithered toward the car that was lighting up the plane’s landing strip. If the driver was sitting in the car they were to wait; if he was outside they were to plant the bleeper on the car. He would have to get out to meet Ben Krim and turn over the parcel.

That would be Corby or Renaldo in the car. He’d have with him one of those tape-recorder-transmitter devices to broadcast the next set of instructions to the Americans — where to deliver the Washington Seven.

It was Ben Krim’s job to report to Sturka’s man — give him the firsthand report on the landing of the Seven in Geneva — and collect the recorder-transmitter, and fly back to El Djamila to deposit the Catalina, and drive to Algiers, and book a flight to Madrid or Paris or Berlin where he would set up the transmitter on another tiresome little clock device so that Ben Krim would be halfway back to Algiers by the time the thing broadcast its message to the world.

Lime was only mildly interested in what the instructions would be. At any rate Ben Krim would be picked up when he flew back to El Djamila and Gilliams’ people would analyze the tape.

In the meantime the car was bugged and Lime would be following Corby or Renaldo back to Sturka’s lair.

It was going to work. He felt it for the first time: the positive knowledge that he had Sturka.

In the night silence he watched the PBY make its superb landing-roll to a stop within a hundred feet of the waiting headlights. The lights clicked off. Someone got out of the car and walked toward the airplane, and Benyoussef Ben Krim climbed down from the dimly lit cockpit to meet the courier. Through the Mark Systems glasses Lime watched the two shadows flow together in the dusk.

The meeting was brief. There was enough light to make out silhouettes, and Lime was fairly sure that was Cesar Renaldo. Not big enough for Corby nor lean enough for Sturka himself.

A curious question occurred to him. What if it had been Sturka? Arrest him on the spot and search for the others? Or, having him in hand, let him go so he could lead you back to them? With Renaldo Lime didn’t care, would let him go; Lime didn’t want Renaldo, not personally. But suppose it had been Sturka?

Renaldo get back in the car, started it up, switched on his lights, drove along the piste making a little curve to get around the PBY, drove almost a mile and stopped in the distance to make a U-turn, his headlights glaring with starlike twinkles across the flat clarity of the bled. Ben Krim was back in the plane and the pilot had one engine running; using a lot of rudder brakes he was turning the ungainly craft around in its own length on the ground. The plane stood still for a moment while the second engine burst into chatter and then it began to roll, searchlights booming from the nacelles, red and white wingtip lights winking.

Lime was looking at the place where Renaldo’s car had been sitting and his brain was working again. A car, he thought. Not a jeep, not a Land Rover. A car. One of those old diesel-powered Mercedes sedans, it was. Humpbacked and round.

So they were holed up on or near a road. Not a piste. It confirmed another expectation.

Lime watched the plane go away and the car drive up the desert track to the northeast, and then he tapped Orr on the shoulder and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

“We going to follow him? I mean he’ll see our lights. It’s getting too dark to travel without lights.”

“No need to follow him,” Lime said.

“Because he’s bugged?”

“Because I know where he’s going.”

They walked to the Land Rover and Lime cranked up the scrambler. “Gilliams?”

“Yes sir.”

“Get me a caravan.”

“What?”

It was one of the advantages of having limitless dollars and limitless armies to command.

The camel caravans of North Africa were a tradition going back a thousand years; they were more than a method of transportation: they were a way of life, a self-perpetuating institution. Each caravan numbered anywhere from a dozen to two hundred camels and made one trip a year but the trip was of a year’s duration: they started somewhere along the Niger with a cargo of pelts and salt and dried meat and handicrafts, they traveled slowly north trading on the way — trading cargo and camels as well — and six months later they reached the Atlas Mountains and picked up a new cargo of manufactured things, dates, kerosene, gunpowder; then they turned around and went back. A caravan was a home: you were born and lived and died in the caravan.

There was usually a caravan around here. It was near the northern terminus. No matter what route they had taken to get here from the south they all converged on the string of foothill towns south of Algiers. It was no great feat for Gilliams to locate one west of Touggourt, and no difficulty to hire its services. Everything was for sale or for hire.

The caravan was in motion less than two hours after Lime’s call. At the same time Lime’s little convoy of Land Rover and truck set out overland, heading across the bled to rendezvous with it.

The fact that Renaldo was driving an ordinary automobile had pinpointed the hiding place for Lime. There was only one passable road from the wadi. It went northeast as far as the old Foreign Legion post at Dzioua and then turned due east to cross ninety miles of broken country to Touggourt and the main highway to Biskra.

The Legion fort was still in use as a district admin headquarters. But for every full-dress fortress there had once been a string of outpost bomas at one-day’s-ride intervals. Thirty miles southeast of Dzioua was a small boma which had been abandoned after World War II. Once or twice in the fifties Lime had visited the place and found evidence someone had been there: bandit fellagha or FLN guerrillas. Conceivably Sturka had used it as a rallying point even in those days. It sat on a two-hundred-foot height and commanded an excellent field of view — or of fire — and it was within a few hundred feet of the present road. It was an ideal place to hold Fairlie — impossible to approach unseen.

The American planeloads and helicopter-loads of personnel had landed at Touggourt, sixty miles from the boma, and they would be ready by the time Lime joined the camel train. There was a doctor, there were several pints of AB-negative blood, there were dozens of sharpshooters and communications people and gadgets. Lime was going to need speed and firepower. He couldn’t sneak inside Sturka’s fortress by stealth or subterfuge.

The risk was enormous: the risk to Fairlie. If it failed Lime would be condemned as a murdering blunderer. Probably they would find a way to put him away for the rest of his life, if they let him live. But everything entailed risk. He could leave Sturka strictly alone and see what happened if he cooperated in turning the Washington Seven loose into asylum. But there was no way to force Sturka to keep his word and release Fairlie; so that risk was equally high. In a way it was better odds to attack — because the people with Sturka weren’t professionals, they weren’t trained to kill without thought, and all he really had to worry about was keeping Sturka away from Fairlie until he could get to Fairlie. The rest of them wouldn’t instinctively know what to do and in their confusion he had a good chance to break through.

The Land Rover bounced across rocks and gullies, its headlights heaving wildly around; Lime gripped his seat and smoked furiously and began to sweat.

Wednesday, January 19

4:15 A.M. North African Time She was lying in a rowboat drifting on a placid lake. A blue sky and a pleasantly warm sun, glass-calm water with only enough current to keep the boat moving gently along. There was no one else; everything was soundless. She didn’t raise her head to look but she knew that the lake emptied into a deep tunnel and that sooner or later the boat would drift into that tunnel and carry her cozily into its warm darkness.

“...Peggy. Hey.”

“Whum?”

“Come on come on. Do I got to slap your face?”

“All right — all right.” She was awake now; she threw the blanket back. “Time’s it?”

“Little after four.”

“Four in the morning?”

“Sometheen wrong with the pig. You got to look at him.”

The words brought her sharply to her senses. “What’s the matter with him?” She was reaching for the veil and robe.

“I don’ know. He just doesn’t look too good.”

She remembered her watch and took it downstairs with her into the cellar corridor.

Alvin had a worried face. He had the door open and Peggy eeled in past him.

Fairlie looked like a corpse. She held the watch crystal to his nostrils and after a moment the crystal fogged slightly. Tested his pulse — it was down, way down.

Oh shit. “You’d better get Sturka.”

Cesar left. She heard his heavy tread on the stair. Not that Sturka could do anything, she thought. She beckoned to Alvin. “I think we ought to try to get him on his feet. Walk him back and forth.”

“You mean like when people take an overdose of sleeping pills?”

“I don’t know anything else to do. Is there any coffee?”

“I’ll have a look. You want me to make some?”

“Yes.”

Alvin left and she heaved Fairlie into a sitting position: slid his feet off the cot and turned him, got her shoulder under his arm and tried to lift him to his feet. But the angles were wrong and she fell asprawl across him and got untangled and tried it again.

It still didn’t work. He was limp and it was going to take two of them to walk him. She left him propped against the wall and waited for the others.

Alvin returned with half a cup of coffee. “I put some more on. This is cold.”

“That’s all right. Let’s try and get it down him. You hold his head.”

She didn’t have to open his mouth; his jaw hung slack. She tipped his head back. “Hold him that way.” Poured a little coffee in to see if he would swallow it.

Sturka’s voice made her jump. “What’s the matter with him?”

“Bad reaction to the drugs,” she said. She looked over her shoulder, filled with anger. “Too much drugs.”

“Well never mind that right now. I think we have visitors.”

Cesar appeared in the doorway behind Sturka. Alvin said, “What kind of visitors?”

Peggy was trying to get coffee down Fairlie. “Hold his head still damn it.”

Cesar said, “Some kind of camel caravan.”

Alvin was suspicious. “Traveling at night?”

“Sometimes they do,” Sturka said. “But I don’t trust it. Let’s go.” He pointed to Cesar. “You out to the back. You know your post.”

Cesar went. Peggy watched Fairlie’s Adam’s apple move up and down when he swallowed. It was a good sign she thought. Then she heard Sturka say, “Bring him upstairs.”

Alvin said dubiously, “We’ll have to carry him.”

“Then carry him.” Sturka had an ugly AK submachine gun slung across his back; he flicked it into his hand and went nimbly into the corridor. Peggy heard him go up the stairs — softly and quickly, two steps at a time.

The movement wouldn’t hurt Fairlie but she wanted to get the rest of the coffee into him first. She motioned Alvin to hold his head again and lifted the cup to Fairlie’s pale lips.

4:28 A.M. North African Time Lime edged through the rubble feeling his way with his feet before he put his weight on them. Starlight fell on the pale crumbled walls; he kept to the deep shadows. When he looked back he couldn’t see the four men behind him and that was good.

He heard someone moving through the wreckage beyond the stucco wall that stood more or less intact against the sky. It loomed just ahead of him, one corner broken off raggedly by a forgotten Italian bomb. It was significant that he could hear the man’s approach; it meant the man didn’t really expect anyone to be out here. The rest of them would be at the opposite end of the building looking out through rifle slits, watching the camel train wind past. Sturka had sent one man to the back because of the possibility the camel train was a diversion — which it was.

There was only one way to do this kind of thing: fast and simply. Get up as close as possible and then rush them, overrun them before they could react against Fairlie.

No subtleties, no elaborate schemes. Just attack. He had to assume Sturka had only three or four comrades; he was relying on his hostage, not his military strength. Lime had to assume there weren’t more than half a dozen of them and that he could overwhelm that many instantly.

He stood with his back to the stucco wall and listened to the man approach the doorway beside him. At the back of his neck the short hairs prickled. He had the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. He let his breath trickle out slowly through his mouth; he fought a cough down.

The man had stopped just inside the door. Lime couldn’t wheel into sight to silence the man without alarming him. It was probably Corby or Renaldo and either of them might be able to sense the presence of alien beings in the silent wreckage. If so it would draw the man outside and that was what Lime needed...

The pulse throbbed at his throat. Distantly he could hear the caravan trudging past, the flipflop of camel hoofs across the stones down below the hill.

Stupid bravado, he thought. It would have made sense to send a younger man on point. But Chad Hill was an innocent and he didn’t know any of the others, they were strangers and if mistakes were made it was better to make them himself...

His elbows and knees were abraded raw: he had come the last two hundred yards on his belly. He settled the knife in his fist.

Movement: the shift of a leather sole on gritty earth. The man was coming out. Lime could hear his breathing.

He stood poised, motionless, down to his raw quivering nerve ends.

He sensed it before he saw it. He timed the man’s breathing; he waited for the man to exhale a breath and then he wheeled into the doorway. Clapped his hand over the man’s mouth and used the knife. Once in Oran he had stabbed into a man who had just taken a deep breath and the scream had echoed a mile.

The man’s body went taut. Lime released the knife and got a grip on the man to keep him from turning.

Renaldo, he thought.

He lowered the body without sound. Stepped outside and made hand motions.

Stealth now, but there would be discovery and soon they would have to move ever so fast. The four sharpshooters slipped in past him, stepped across Renaldo’s body, went prowling ahead like sharks, rifles out ahead of them. Lime fell in behind Orr, lifting the .38 out of the clamshell. Lime was the only one armed with lethal ammunition. It had to be that way. Total authority, and total responsibility. Nobody got killed unless Lime did the killing.

There had been lights before — probably kerosene lamps — but there were none now. That was to be expected; Sturka would have extinguished all lamps.

Sturka was probably at one of the gunports in the front wall watching the passage of the caravan. He would have Fairlie with him or close to him: Fairlie was his shield against trouble.

Lime had given the shooters the classic order: Shoot anything that moves. Their ammunition was tranquilizer darts; they would be able to sort out friend and foe afterward.

They moved forward in silence through the tumbled corridors of the old outpost. The roofs were half caved in and there was a little light, enough to see by. An old splintered door stood half off its hinges at the end of the corridor, ajar two feet, giving access to the room beyond but blocking view of it. They crowded up close to the door, staying behind it; the others waited for Lime’s signal and Lime waited for his ears to tell him whether the room beyond the door was where Sturka stood with Fairlie. He was trying to reconstruct the architecture in his mind, trying to remember the plan of the place. Fifteen years...

4:35 A.M. North African Time Alvin was walking Fairlie back and forth. Peggy went across to the deep shadows of the front corner to look out one of the windows. Through the deep slit she saw the slow procession of camels and riders at the foot of the hill, hooded silent figures in the starlight. Sturka was at the window fifteen feet to her right — watching, more tense than she had ever seen him. She saw no danger but Sturka sensed something. He didn’t communicate it to the rest of them except by the taut line of his back, the high set of his head.

A sound.

Somewhere in back. She turned her head, trying to identify it. The scrape of a foot? But Cesar was back there.

It was probably Cesar then, or a rodent in the walls.

But Alvin had heard it too and had stopped in the center of the room with Fairlie draped against him, Fairlie’s arm over his shoulders. Alvin had his left arm around Fairlie’s waist and a revolver in his right hand. Sturka had been explicit, the brief sibilant command on the stairs: If there’s any trouble at all — shoot him and then worry about yourself.

Fairlie wasn’t quite conscious; neither was he comatose. His legs functioned after a fashion but if let go he would fall. Like a drunk.

Sturka turned and stared at the back door. Cesar had shut it when he’d gone to the back. It stood closed, mute — but something had drawn Sturka. Beyond was a half-demolished barrack room; then a door lodged askew, a corridor past the ruins of officer quarters, another door, finally wrecked ruins of rock and stucco too destroyed to indicate its previous use.

Sturka was scowling; he had thrown the Arab hood back off his head. He made a hand motion to Alvin.

But Alvin hadn’t time to move. Peggy saw the door crash open and abruptly the room was filled with men firing rifles...

It was dim. Probably a very bad light for shooting. Her eyes were used to it but still she wasn’t sure what happened. The eruptive flashes stung her eyes. The racket was earsplitting.

Alvin was in the center of her vision and she saw that part of it most clearly: Alvin firing instinctively into the attackers, his revolver bucking. But Alvin waited to watch his target fall and that gave the rest of them plenty of time. Someone shot Alvin and the force of the blow knocked him into a spin.

She watched in disbelief. Her head turned dreamily and she saw Sturka, his rough pitted face lifted, his eyes unrevealing, bracing the submachine gun to fire. To fire not at the attackers but at Fairlie who was already falling to the floor...

A big man with a revolver was firing as if he were on a target range somewhere: holding the revolver at arms’ length in both hands and shooting with a horrible rhythmic intensity, shooting and shooting until the gun was empty and the hammer clicked drily...

She saw Sturka fall and she thought suddenly They haven’t seen me yet it must be too dark here and she felt the weight of the pistol Sturka had pressed into her hand; she saw Fairlie stirring on the floor and she thought They haven’t killed him, it’s up to me to kill him isn’t it? But she didn’t lift the pistol. She only stood in the corner’s deep shadows and watched while one of the attackers discovered her and lifted his rifle.

She saw the orange flame-tip when he fired.

4:39 A.M. North African Time Lime had a stitch in his ribs. He stood soaked in his own juices.

Sturka had six wounds, caliber .38 inches and any one of them might have killed him. Lime had fired with deliberation, knowing there was time to get the others out, knowing Sturka was the one he had to kill.

Sturka died at Lime’s feet. Lime saw his face crumple in death but there was no recognition in Sturka’s eyes and no sign he realized anything: Sturka died in sulky silence without last words. He lay seeping blood into the stone floor and when the blood stopped flowing Lime went across the floor to where Clifford Fairlie lay.

Fatigue was gritty in his eyes. He could smell already the sickening pungency of death in the room. Sturka was dead and Corby had killed one of the Early Birds. The Astin girl lay in a crumpled heap, stunned by the force of the dart that had struck her in the chest; the tranquilizer would keep her unconscious for a bit.

And Fairlie. Orr had a flashlight, he was shaking it to strengthen its beam. Perhaps it was the quality of that light, but Fairlie had the pallor of death. Lime dropped to his knees beside the President-elect. He heard Orr say, “Get the doctor, Wilkes,” and one of the sharpshooters ran out front to signal the caravan.

When the doctor arrived Fairlie had stopped breathing.

“We’ll need an autopsy to be sure.”

Lime was too drained to reply. He only stared at the doctor out of a dulled agony.

“Probably they had him doped up to keep him docile,” the doctor said.

“And that killed him?”

“No. Your tranquilizer bullet killed him. On top of what was already in his system it became an overdose. Look, you had no way to anticipate this. I’ll testify to that.”

Lime had no interest in trying to shift the blame. It was beside the point. There was only one point. He had made a mistake and it had cost Fairlie’s life.

“You did everything right,” Orr was saying inaccurately. “None of them touched Fairlie with so much as a finger. We took them all out before they had a chance at him. Look it wasn’t your fault...”

But Lime was walking away. One of the men was on the walkie-talkie summoning the convoy and Lime went outside to meet it and waited in the night repressing all feelings and all thought.

“I’m sorry. I’m so Goddamned sorry sir.”

Lime accepted Chad Hill’s sorrow with a vague nod of his head. “I’ll have to talk to somebody on that scrambler. See if you can raise Washington for me.”

“The President?”

“Whoever you can get.”

“You want me to do it sir?”

He felt remote gratitude and he touched Chad Hill’s arm. “Thank you. I guess it’s up to me.”

“I mean I could—”

“Go on Chad.”

“Yes sir.”

He watched the youth lope down the hillside to the Land Rover. He followed more slowly, moving like a somnambulist, tripping over things.

Eighteen or twenty riflemen stood around watching him with aggrieved compassion. He walked through their little knot and they made way for him. He reached the Land Rover and wasn’t sure he could stay on his feet; he pulled the tailgate down and sat on it. Chad Hill handed him the telephone-style handset. “It’s Mr. Satterthwaite in the war room.”

There was a lot of racket. Static, or the scrambler operating imperfectly, or perhaps just the busy noise of the war room.

“Lime here.”

“David? Where are you?”

“I’m in the desert.”

“Well?”

“...He’s dead.”

“What? Who’s dead?”

“Clifford Fairlie.”

Silence against the background noise.

Finally: “Dear sweet God.” A voice so weak Lime hardly caught it.

“We got them all if it matters. Sturka and Renaldo bought the farm.” My God. Bought the farm. An expression he hadn’t heard or used in fifteen years.

Satterthwaite was saying something. Lime didn’t catch it. “What?”

“I said that puts President Brewster back in office for four more years. The Senate voted cloture on Hollander’s filibuster a couple of hours ago. They’ve amended the Act. It’s on the President’s desk for signature.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not sure I care.”

“I think,” and Satterthwaite’s voice was very low and very slowly distinct, “I have to know how and why Fairlie died, David.”

“He died of an overdose of tranquilizers. I suppose you could say I killed him. I suppose you could say that.”

“Go on. Tell me all of it.”

Lime told him. And then asked, “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to see. Don’t say anything to anyone just yet. Keep all your people together, bring them all home. You’ll fly Fairlie’s body into Andrews — I’ll meet you or have someone meet you. There’ll have to be a debriefing — make sure you keep all your people incommunicado.”

“No announcement at all?”

“Not from you. We’ll have to release the news at this end. Actually I suppose it’s up to the President to make the announcement.”

Lime fumbled for a cigarette. “You may as well recall those seven prisoners. There won’t be any exchange now.”

“I will. All right, David, I’ll see you,” Satterthwaite said lamely and broke the connection.

Lime tossed the handset into the bed of the Land Rover and began jabbing his pockets to find his cigarette lighter.

12:20 A.M. EST It looked like snow again. Satterthwaite stood in a small bare room on the top floor of the Executive Office Building. He hadn’t switched any lights on. The city beyond the window threw in a little light. He had been standing alone in the dimness for some time. Just standing there.

Everybody had gone home. The war room had been dismantled. He had sat in it alone until the clean-up crews had come to clear up the mess; then he had come up here to think.

The Southern bloc had fought for Hollander but it had been no real contest. Brewster’s supporters had played on the senility issue; nothing overt had been said on the Senate floor about Hollander’s political leanings. That would have been too raw. In fact very little had been said about Hollander at all, except by his supporters. The issue — the pretended issue — was experience and qualifications. Mr. President, I gladly avail myself of the privilege of offering my support to the able and distinguished Senator from Montana in affirming that in national crises when time is of the essence, the laws of succession to the Presidency of the United States must take into account the realities of today’s complex administrative problems. We cannot and should not expect anyone to have to assume the burdens of this office without adequate preparation and introduction — that is to say briefings — on the multitude of critical ongoing problems which inevitably hang in the balance between changing administrations. Under the present circumstances where there is quite obviously no time at all to hand over the reins of government to a newcomer in an orderly fashion, is it not clear that we have but one intelligent course to follow?...

Of course it was all poppycock, everyone knew it: Brewster could easily stay on as a guest in a White House wing for long enough to brief the new President if that were the only difficulty. Hollander’s supporters had pointed out such things with biting scorn and thundering anger but there had been no stemming the pressure for Brewster. Everyone remembered how close the popular election had been. The accusations against Los Angeles and other cities, the recounts, the solid Democratic majority in both houses which secretly applauded Brewster’s move because it vindicated the party.

But all these were minor; there was only one real issue and that was Wendell Hollander. His senile paranoia, his political dementia. Hollander had the unique ability to terrify almost everyone in Congress. And those who knew him best were those whom he terrified most.

Against that terror the anti-Brewster arguments, no matter how legion and logical, had carried no weight. It was true Brewster had usurped the prerogatives of the electorate: having lost the popular election he was overruling its results by act of Congress. It was true as Fitzroy Grant insisted that Brewster’s action was in defiance of every reasonable interpretation of the spirit of the Constitution’s safeguards. Maybe it was true also that Brewster’s ability to acquire power far exceeded his ability to exercise it wisely; at least Fitz Grant suspected as much.

Yet what Brewster had done was not illegal, not unconstitutional, not technically refutable. He had seized upon the law — or a loophole in it — and had won because Congress had seized on an emotional loophole. The legislators had accepted the emergency plan primarily because it covered an emergency they had hoped and expected not to have meet. Like everyone else they had convinced themselves that Fairlie would be recovered alive. The irony was, they probably wouldn’t have voted for the measure if they had known Fairlie was about to die — and so Hollander would have been President after all.

The Senate’s opposition had been led by Grant, who was respected even if unheeded; over in the House the resistance had been led by a handful of hysterical far-right Congressmen who had quite literally been hooted off the floor. Ways and Means had reported out the House resolution within hours of the President’s appeal and the roll-call vote had been taken with the relentless speed of a panzer blitz. The Acting Speaker, Philip Krayle of New York, had directed Ways and Means to form a subcommittee ready to meet on ten minutes’ notice with the Senate’s companion committee the instant the Senate bill had been ratified. It had all taken place with guilty haste and scores of them had slipped away furtively the instant their work had been done.

Satterthwaite hated equally Brewster’s lunatic confidence and Fitz Grant’s lunatic misgivings. Congress had taken the better of two choices. No denying that. But to prevent one form of tyranny they had created another.

Abruptly Satterthwaite stopped in front of the window. He made a number of grunts, audible punctuation to his thoughts. He was staring out at the city with the intense concentration of a lecher watching a woman disrobe but he wasn’t seeing much of anything: his mind was turned inward and abruptly he shot out of the room and hurried toward the elevators.

The clean-up crew still mopped in the war room. Satterthwaite popped across the hall into the conference room and reached for the telephone and the federal directory. He found Philip Krayle’s number and dialed.

It rang a dozen times. No answer. Well of course that would be Krayle’s office. It was one o’clock in the morning. Satterthwaite spoke an oath, looked in the city phone book. No number for Representative Krayle.

Unlisted. Damn the son of a bitch. Satterthwaite pounded his fist on the table.

Finally he dialed a number he knew: Liam McNeely’s home phone.

McNeely answered on the second ring.

“It’s Bill Satterthwaite, Liam.”

“Hello Bill.” A voice utterly devoid of everything. Well it was understandable: McNeely had been Fairlie’s closest political advisor and friend and had only learned of Fairlie’s death within the past couple of hours. The President had gone on television at eleven to make two announcements. Someone — possibly Perry Hearn — had thought to call McNeely because McNeely had called Satterthwaite to ask for details. Satterthwaite had stuck to the prepared script: Fairlie had been dead before the rescuers arrived, the kidnappers had injected him with an overdose of drugs.

“Liam, I’m sorry to bother you at a time like this but it’s vital. I need to reach Philip Krayle. I thought you might have his home number.”

“Well I—”

Satterthwaite waited for McNeely to wrench his thoughts onto the new subject. In the end McNeely said, “Hang on a minute, I’ll get it,” in a faraway tone.

In a short while McNeely was back on the line. He spoke seven digits and Satterthwaite wrote them down on the cover of the directory by the phone.

“That all you wanted Bill?”

“Yes, thanks. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

“It’s all right. I wasn’t about to sleep tonight.”

“I’m — wait a minute, Liam, I think you can help me.”

“Help you do what?”

“I can’t talk on the phone. Are you dressed?”

“Yes.”

“I’m in the Executive Office Building. The conference room across the hall from the NSC boardroom. Can you get over here right away? I need someone to help me do some telephoning. A lot of calls to make.”

“I don’t know if I’d be much good talking to anyone tonight, Bill. I hate to cop out on you but—”

“It’s for Cliff Fairlie,” Satterthwaite said, “and it’s important.”

By the time McNeely arrived — improbably natty in a mohair suit and Italian shoes — the clean-up crew had finished in the boardroom. Satterthwaite took him inside and closed the door. “I’m glad you could come.”

“Very mysterious. What the hell have you got in mind?”

They were not exactly friends although they had had a great deal of contact since the election. It had been taken for granted McNeely would assume Satterthwaite’s role in the new administration.

“You’ve been thinking about Fairlie I’m sure.”

“Yes.”

“There’ll be rumors Brewster had him killed.”

“I suppose there will. There always are, when one man benefits from another’s death.”

“Those rumors will have no basis in fact,” Satterthwaite said. “I have to clear that up with you before we go on.”

McNeely’s one-sided smile was merely polite. “We called him a lot of names in the campaign but I don’t think any of them was murderer.”

“He’s a surprisingly honest man, Liam. To use an archaic turn of phrase he’s a man of goodwill. I realize from your point of view he’s too much a prisoner of old-fashioned political values, but you’ve got to credit his integrity.”

“Why are you saying all this to me?”

“Because more and more I’ve become convinced it’s wrong that a President who’s been defeated should be permitted to succeed himself.”

“Come again?”

“Sit down, take your coat off. I’ll explain it as best I can.”

Krayle arrived at twenty before two, a lumpy man in a rumpled topcoat. “What is it, Bill?”

“You know Liam McNeely of course.”

“Sure. We campaigned together.”

“I’m no expert on congressional regulations,” Satterthwaite said. “I need facts from you about the breakdown — the table of organization. The chief officer in the House is the Speaker, is that right?”

“Sure, sure.” Krayle looked very tired. He moved to a chair and rubbed his face and propped an elbow on the long table.

Satterthwaite glanced at McNeely. The slim New Yorker was watching them both with keen intensity.

“This could be damned important to all of us,” Satterthwaite said. “When Milton Luke died why wasn’t a successor elected immediately? Why were you installed as Acting Speaker?”

Krayle shook his head. His mouth made a wry shape. “I see what you’re getting at. You’re a strange one to ask me that question — one of Brewster’s own boys?”

“Go on then,” Satterthwaite said.

“Well I’m a little new to the job of course. They needed somebody to fill the interim post and I was handy. I’m not really qualified for it. I haven’t got much seniority — there are a lot of people ahead of me. Mostly Southerners.”

“Why didn’t they elect a permanent successor to Luke?”

“Two reasons. First we don’t have a full head count. We lost a lot of people in the various bombings if you recall.” Very dry. Krayle didn’t have a reputation for caustic sarcasms; it must have been his way of throwing up defenses against the chain of traumatic shocks that had affected them all.

“Maybe you don’t know everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours,” Krayle said. “We had to drag a hundred Congressmen back to Washington. A lot of them went home for the funerals of their friends. Until this evening we didn’t have a quorum in the chamber. We’ve lost seventy-two Congressmen. Fourteen others are still in the hospitals. Thank God none of them’s still on the critical list. But the point is, we’re eighty-six bodies short — and the majority of the dead ones were Democrats. You get my point?”

“You mean the Democrats couldn’t scrape up a majority if you tried to seat a new Speaker right now.”

“Something like that. There’s been a lot of agitation. Some of the Southerners seem quite willing to switch sides of the aisle unless we agree to compromise on a Dixiecrat for Speaker. A group of us talked it over — both parties but Northerners mainly. We decided it would be better to wait until special elections have been held or governors’ appointments made, to fill the vacant seats. Presumably that would more or less restore the solid Democratic majority from before. Also it would prevent anybody from accusing us of railroading something through while we didn’t have a full contingent on hand.”

“That didn’t seem to stop you from reelecting Howard Brewster last night,” McNeely said.

“My God nobody believed Fairlie would die — and besides, you know what the alternative was.”

Satterthwaite said, “You still haven’t explained it to my satisfaction. The Speaker of the House, if there were one right now, would be next in line for the Presidency. Ahead of Hollander, even ahead of Brewster. So why didn’t you elect a new Speaker and let him become President?”

“That was the first thing we thought of. But the law doesn’t work that way. The line of succession applies only to officers who’ve held office — and let me quote — ‘prior to the time of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify.’ I mean you can see the point. You simply can’t go and appoint a new Speaker of the House who’s really being appointed to the Presidency after the fact. The only Speaker of the House who was fully entitled to take Cliff Fairlie’s place was the man who held that office prior to the time when Fairlie was kidnapped. That was Milton Luke and of course he’s dead.”

McNeely said, “That doesn’t make sense to me.”

Krayle looked at him. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t know of any law that says you can’t elect a new Speaker whenever an old Speaker dies or retires. You don’t have to wait for the beginning of the next session of Congress to do that.”

“It’s true we can elect a new Speaker any time we want to, but whoever we elect now is someone who will have been elected to the Speakership after the fact. Don’t you see? Fairlie’s already dead. The law says ‘prior to the time of death,’ etcetera etcetera.”

“But Fairlie isn’t the President. Never has been.”

“The law applies equally to a President-elect. Section Three, Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution. Also the Presidential Succession Act, Three U.S.C. Nineteen seventy-one. Don’t think we haven’t done our homework.”

McNeely collapsed into a chair. He waggled a hand toward Satterthwaite. “Well it was worth a try.”

“You should have known that idea would have occurred to a lot of other people besides you,” Krayle said. “What the hell.”

Satterthwaite said, “I’m not ready to give it up. It appears to me the law applies to people who hold office at the time when the vacancy occurs in the Presidency. There’s no vacancy until noon tomorrow when Brewster’s term ends.”

“There’s one trouble with that position,” Krayle said wearily. “The laws are worded so that the President-elect occupies a sort of quasi-office. When he dies the Vice-President-elect becomes President-elect. When he dies the incumbent Speaker becomes President-elect for all practical purposes. That takes place at the time of death, not the time of vacancy in the White House. I’m not trying to pretend it’s simple or even cut-and-dried, but that’s the way it appears to work. The minute Dexter Ethridge died, Milton Luke was for all practical purposes the President-elect of the United States. That’s the law.”

“I don’t see how you can have it both ways. If what you say is true, then the minute Luke died, Wendell Hollander became President-elect. If that’s true then Brewster can’t supersede Hollander — you can’t make that kind of law retroactive.”

Krayle’s droopy eyes slowly changed shape. “You might have a point there. I don’t think that occurred to any of us.”

“Suppose it occurs to Hollander sometime in the next four years? We could have a hell of a mess — the Presidency up for grabs.”

“What is it you’re getting at?”

Satterthwaite felt the Congressman’s hard stare. Krayle’s eyes burned like gems. McNeely, slumped low in his chair, watched with avid fascination.

Satterthwaite said, “There’s confusion in the laws, that’s obvious. Nobody ever anticipated the unique situation we’re in today — how could they? So no matter what solution is found, someone’s going to, find a legal objection to it.”

“Yes. Go on.”

“I’m willing to accept your interpretation of the laws of succession. Evidently just about everyone agrees with it. But you’ve got to be willing to accept the possibility that if you did go ahead and elect a new Speaker right now, he’d have a legitimate claim on the Presidency.”

“You mean if we elected a new Speaker before noon tomorrow.”

“Of course.”

“Well it would be a disputed claim. It would only make things worse.”

“But such a claim would have a certain legitimacy, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose you could say that. It’s possible to read the law that way. A lot of people would dispute it.”

“But the alternative is to allow Brewster to continue in office for four years in spite of the fact that he’s obviously flouting the whole purpose of the Constitution.”

“Electing a new Speaker would flout it just as much.” Krayle shook his head. “I can’t go along with you. The point you’re ignoring is that Brewster would fight it tooth and nail — and Brewster’s got the mass popular backing to make an awful fight of it, unlike old Wendy Hollander.”

Liam McNeely said, “I think a lot of that mass popular backing would dwindle away in the flick of an eye if you gave the mass populace an attractive alternative.”

Krayle didn’t accept it. “If you think the country’s ready to explode now, what do you think would happen after we got done dividing it up with this fight you’re proposing? And anyhow I’ll tell you something — Congress has been pushed around enough. They won’t stand for more railroading from your direction. If you were going to switch sides against Brewster why didn’t you do it a lot earlier?”

“Because I hadn’t thought of a viable alternative to Hollander. Neither had anybody else. Look, I’m not against Howard Brewster, I’m only against going through with a hell of a dangerous precedent. I think we have to avoid that if we can.”

“We can’t. It’s too late.”

“I don’t believe that,” Satterthwaite said.

“The thing is,” McNeely said, “Brewster might let go voluntarily. Especially if it’s to defer to a popular choice. He knows if he tries to keep office for another four years his hold on the country will be tarnished. Nobody will ever forget the way he got his second term. It’ll rankle. The dissidents hate him already — and a lot of people will join them.”

Satterthwaite let the air settle before he spoke; when he did it was with quiet emphasis. “I know Howard Brewster. He doesn’t want to be hated. I think we may be able to persuade him to support a move to nominate a new Speaker of the House.”

Krayle sighed. “You’ll have to forgive my skepticism.”

“I’m sure it’s justified. But grant us the possibility, will you?”

“In politics just about anything’s possible, Bill.”

“Good enough. Which brings us to the reason we wanted to talk to you. We can’t have the House members scattering again. Can you corral the membership and keep them on tap for the time between now and Thursday noon?”

Krayle tipped his head back to study him narrowly. “I suppose you’ve even got a candidate all picked out for us too.”

“Of course.”

“Yes?”

“The man who almost got the nomination. The man Fairlie wanted on his own ticket — the man Dex Ethridge designated as his Vice-President.”

“Andrew Bee,” Krayle breathed. “Jesus Christ, Bill, I think you’ve damn well got something there.”

9:45 A.M. EST The big jet landed at Andrews and when it taxied to a stop Lime unbelted himself and left the plane, unrefreshed by the six hours’ sleep above the Atlantic. The scrambler call from Satterthwaite had reached him at Gibraltar and he had obeyed instructions, coming on ahead of the others in a virtually empty plane, leaving Chad Hill in charge to bring all the bodies home, living and dead.

There was no sun. The runway was a little misty, the pavement slick. It was a day filled with gray gloom. An Air Force FOLLOW ME jeep came hissing along to the plane and Satterthwaite was in the passenger seat.

They reached the White House at ten-thirty. The Secret Service people nodded to Satterthwaite and greeted Lime with grave welcomes. Their movements were tracked by many alert eyes while they made their way to the President’s sanctum. Here and there a crate stood in a quiet corner: Brewster had packed weeks ago and it would have been unseemly to begin unpacking again.

Margaret kept them cooling their heels for nearly twenty minutes before they were admitted. Whoever had shared the President’s company in the interval had departed by the side door.

Brewster greeted them with ill-controlled anger. Lime, closing the door after Satterthwaite, looked at the President and was struck by the sheer physical size of the man as he had been struck by it before. On his feet Brewster loomed, he filled the big office the way a caged tiger filled his cell.

“What’s all the mystery, Bill?”

“We have to talk to you, Mr. President.”

“About this Andy Bee business I assume?”

Satterthwaite couldn’t help a little smile. “How long have you known?”

“Several hours. I’ve got a lot of ears — you of all people ought to know that.” The President’s eyes flicked briefly across Lime’s face: quite obviously he wanted to know what Lime was doing here, why he was with Satterthwaite. Quickly Brewster’s attention went back to Satterthwaite: “I suppose it’s an appropriate time for me to make a little ‘Et tu Brute’ speech. It was you, wasn’t it? Or did my sources foul that up?”

“It was me.”

Brewster nodded; the big head shifted, the eyes examined Lime and Satterthwaite in turn. Lime felt the force in them; he met the President’s stare uneasily.

Brewster said, “And now I suppose you’re ready to explain to me all the reasons why I should step aside and yield to Andy Bee.”

The conversation had very little reality for Lime. He was tired, he wasn’t a political animal; out of place, he only watched and awaited his cue.

The President said, “I guess you’ve been letting Fitz Grant bend your ear.”

“Fitz believes you intend to crack down on thousands of radicals.”

“I might have had that in mind. It’s a human reaction, Bill.”

“And now?”

“I’m still thinking on it.”

“It’d be a mistake the country would never recover from.”

“It might,” the President said, “but not for the reason you think it would.”

“No?”

“They need cracking down on, Bill. God how they need it. If we can’t hold up our heads in this country and fight back at the subversives who want to destroy us — Christ, if you won’t fight you deserve to lose. But I’m in a pickle now. I wish I’d foreseen it. I campaigned against Wendy Hollander on a ticket of moderation and tolerance. If I turned around and destroyed the radicals the way I should, the country’d have my hide in strips.” An odd smile, a quick hand gesture. “Puts me in a corner, don’t it.”

“Fitz Grant did say something like that. You’d end up looking like Johnson to Hollander’s Goldwater.”

“All right. But that’s not what you’re here to talk about. Is it.”

“There are reasons,” Satterthwaite said — and Lime felt the bitter reluctance — “why you must stand aside and support the Bee nomination.”

“Are there?”

“Several. For one thing there’s a legal technicality. I won’t go into detail at this point but we’re fairly certain Wendy Hollander has a basis to challenge you if you leave things stand as they are. He can maintain that according to the law he became President-elect the minute Milton Luke died, and that the amendment you passed in Congress was not binding because it would have had to be retroactive.”

“He’d have a hell of a time making that stick.”

“Mr. President, he could tear the country apart on that issue.”

“He could try. I’d be willing to fight it.”

“All right. Then consider the flimsy position you’re in with the public. They’ll call you a despot and a dictator and a lot of other names. They’ll insist you’ve flouted the Constitution and the will of the electorate. They’ll be calling for your resignation — in fact I wouldn’t put it past some of them, not only the leftists but the Hollander wing as well, to start impeachment proceedings.”

“They wouldn’t get far.”

“Far enough to whip the public into a frenzy. Do you want battle lines drawn up in the streets?”

“You’re forecasting civil war. That’s fanciful.”

“No, Mr. President, I don’t think it is. Because your opposition will have a piece of ammunition you won’t be able to defend yourself against.” Satterthwaite whipped around to Lime. “David, I want you to tell the President exactly what happened to Clifford Fairlie.”

The President was taken aback for the first time. Lime saw it; he had been watching the man steadily.

Lime told it straight. “You could call it an accident,” he concluded, “but any way you cut it, he was killed by agents of the American Government, not by his kidnappers.”

“Well yes, but—”

“There were half a dozen of us in the room at the time that dart was fired, Mr. President. There must have been twenty of us in the place by the time the doctor announced his findings. We’re holding them incommunicado but you can’t do that forever. With that many people involved in the secret, the truth will get out.”

Satterthwaite raised a hand, palm out. Lime’s part of it was concluded and Satterthwaite picked up the ball. “They’ll claim we did it deliberately of course. They’ll say you wanted Fairlie dead to perpetuate yourself in office.”

The President drew himself up. “Bill, you don’t walk into the office of the President of the United States with a cheap attempt at blackmail. For the love of—”

“No sir. You misunderstand. David and I aren’t threatening you. If the accusations are made — and believe me they will be — we’ll both back you to the hilt. We’ll tell the absolute truth. Don’t forget David and I are implicated just as deeply as you are, if not more so. We’ll have to defend ourselves and of course we’ll do it with the truth. You didn’t murder Fairlie. Nobody murdered him. It was a freak accident, the result of our ignorance of one fact — the fact that Fairlie had been doped up so heavily before we reached him.”

Satterthwaite took a ragged breath. “But who’s going to believe us, Mr. President?”

Brewster’s face was suffused with a rush of blood. “I don’t like being bulldozed, Bill. There’ve been ridiculous rumors and accusations before.”

“Not like these.”

“Don’t you remember the slanders against Lyndon Johnson after the Kennedy assassination?”

“It wasn’t the same, Mr. President. Kennedy was not killed by known agents of the Administration. Johnson hadn’t just lost an election to the dead man. And if I can be blunt about it Johnson didn’t have the kind of enemies you have now. Hollander on the right, everybody on the far left, and a vast body of uncertain people in the center.”

“From what you say there’ll be rumors whether or not I remain in this seat. That’s the weakness in your strategy, Bill.”

“No sir. If you step down now it’ll prove you had nothing to gain by Fairlie’s death. It won’t stop the rumors but it’ll take the force out of them. Their target will be a retired politician, not the incumbent President of the United States. There’s a world of difference.”

Howard Brewster reached for a cigar but did not light it. He studied it for a very long time. Lime felt the busy hum of the White House through the soles of his shoes.

Finally the President spoke. “The idea of nominating Andy Bee to the Speakership — was that your notion, Bill?”

“A lot of them thought of it, or something like it. Naturally. But they didn’t act on it because they weren’t sure it would work — they all assumed you’d fight it bitterly and none of them had the strength left for another battle. They’re scared, Mr. President. We’re all scared.”

“But you put them up to it.”

“You could say that. It’s still uncertain. If you decide to fight it they may not even introduce the measure. You’ve got enough loyal supporters to maintain a filibuster from here to tomorrow noon.”

“Putting me exactly where Hollander was twenty-four hours ago, hey?”

“It’s not quite the same. But close enough.”

Suddenly Lime felt the presidential eyes drill into him. “You sir. What do you think?”

“I don’t count, Mr. President. I’m just a gumshoe.”

“You’ve got a brain in your head. A good one. Tell me what it thinks.”

“I think you’ve been a pretty good President, sir. And I think the people voted you out of office last November.”

“Thank you for your candor, Mr. Lime.”

The President’s attention dropped to the cigar in his fingers and Lime glanced at Satterthwaite. They were both thinking the same thing, Lime felt. The President hadn’t really been seeking advice from him; he’d been looking for something deeper — a clue to the realities that lay outside this room. He knew he still had the authority to say “Frog” but he was no longer certain which way the people would jump in response.

Brewster was in fact awesomely close to Hollander’s position of yesterday and he knew it, visibly. Once again, dizzily, the country had a choice. Andrew Bee was the closest thing to Fairlie it was possible to offer. Bee would be acceptable to the left because of his politics; paradoxically he might be equally acceptable to the right because he did have a lawful claim to the office, he represented everything the voters had mandated, and his position would appeal to the sympathies of those who held to strict adherence to law and Constitution. Only the blessing of one man was needed — a man who sat in a historically unique position because he alone had the power to decide which of two men should become President of the United States.

Thursday, January 20

12:00 noon EST “Hold up your right hand and repeat after me.”

The cameras zoomed in close on the face of the next President. Lime reached for a cigarette without taking his eyes off the screen. On the couch Satterthwaite stirred his coffee. Bev stood behind Lime’s chair watching the television screen, massaging the back of Lime’s neck.

“...do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.”

Satterthwaite bounded off the couch and strode to the set to turn the sound down. His burning magnified eyes rode around to Lime. “He could have told us the minute you and I walked into the office yesterday. I feel like a prize ass.”

“Uhn.”

“You figured it out before I did. Didn’t you.”

“Maybe,” Lime said. “I guessed; I wasn’t sure.”

“But you didn’t tell me. You could have warned me to pull in my horns. You didn’t.”

“I thought it was up to him to do that.” Lime stretched drowsily; tipped his face back and peered into Bev’s smiling upside-down eyes.

“Not telling me,” Satterthwaite muttered, “that was his way of punishing me for losing the faith.”

Bev from her experiential wisdom of years in the Speaker’s office said, “Andy Bee’s a Republican of course,” as if that explained everything.

Perhaps it did. Brewster was an old-line Democrat and that was why it hadn’t occurred to him until Krayle had got him out of bed yesterday to tell him Satterthwaite’s scheme.

On the screen President Andrew Bee was launching into a low-keyed Inaugural Address and the camera pulled back to show the others on the dais with him: Howard Brewster prominently at his right elbow, looking attentive and content — almost smug. It brought to mind the smile Brewster had shown yesterday when finally he had said to Satterthwaite, “Have Perry set up the television room.”

“Yes?”

“I made my decision hours ago, Bill. I’m afraid you’re too late to change my mind. I tried to reach you quite a while ago but I suppose you must have been out at Andrews to meet Mr. Lime. Nobody knew where to reach you.”

Satterthwaite had reddened. “And you’ve just been letting me shoot my face off.”

“It helped. It wasn’t an easy decision — I’m glad to have had confirmation from both of you. Bill, I’m sorry the idea of nominating Bee to the Speakership didn’t occur to me before it occurred to someone else. It’s the only answer — the only way out of this bog we’re mired in.”

Lime had caught Satterthwaite’s wry tail-of-the-eye glance. They had expected appeals to loyalty, friendship; attempts to reason, to fight; threats and pleas. Now it was like throwing a fist against an opponent who had obligingly fallen to the floor a split second before you tried to hit him. And the President was taking pleasure in it.

The Brewster smile broadened. “Haven’t you ever known me to give in graciously?”

“Not where your whole political career was at stake.”

“My political career ended last November at the polls, Bill.”

“And you’re giving up without a fight.” Satterthwaite’s tone was laced with disbelieving skepticism.

“I never refused to fight,” the President said. “I fought pretty well, I think. I just lost, that’s all. You fight, you lose, you go home and lick your wounds. That’s the biological law. The arguments you’ve been raising here this morning — I’d be a prize fool if I hadn’t thought of them long before you proposed them to me. Now if there’s nothing else I’d suggest you set up the news conference, Bill. And get Andy Bee on the wire for me.”

After that there had been the frantic telephoning and organizing and caucusing. It took pressure and persuasion to bring some of the leaders around: they got balky because they felt they were being treated cheaply. First Brewster had railroaded his “emergency measure” through. Now Fairlie was dead, the emergency measure stood ready to fill the gap, and suddenly Brewster didn’t want to use it — he wanted something else instead.

In the end he had got what he wanted, but not because it was his wish. The House voted to seat Bee simply because he was an alternative to Brewster as Brewster had been to Hollander. But it had taken herculean work from Krayle and all the others and even so it had barely squeaked through, more as a protest against Brewster’s high-handedness than as a gesture of support for him. The vote had come through at seven-fifty this morning.

Bev said, “Hadn’t you better go home to your wife?”

Lime jerked upright and only then realized she was talking to Satterthwaite.

“I probably will. No place else to go anymore.” Satterthwaite gave them a benign look, got up and reached for his coat.

Bev’s strong fingers kneaded Lime’s back. Satterthwaite was moving to the door; Lime kept him in view.

Satterthwaite waved his coat grandly. “It’s pretty funny when you think about it, David. You and I have changed the history of the planet and what do we have to show for it? We’re both out of a job.”

Lime neither spoke nor smiled. Satterthwaite had his hand on the knob. “What sort of unemployment compensation do you suppose you have for people who saved the world for democracy?” His laughter, very off key, rang behind him after he had left.

Lime put his cigarette in the ashtray and closed his eyes. He felt Bev’s strong ministrations” and heard faintly the mutter of Andrew Bee’s steady reassuring voice.