Acts of Mercy Read online

  Four years ago Augustine had risen from relative anonymity as junior senator from California to rally a party so badly split that it was given no hope of succeeding to power. When he had captured public favor with his low-key and old-fashioned campaign and won the election by an amazing four million popular votes, the press had been for the most part quietly supportive. And they had remained that way during the first half of his term. Only then relations had weakened with Russia and China, and energy and other important domestic policies had failed to be implemented, and the jobless rate had soared, and the media had finally turned on Augustine, had begun to criticize him with increasing vehemence as a weak, ineffectual leader, as an overly simplistic man with a superficial grasp of issues. As a result, the President’s popularity—over sixty percent for nearly the first three years—had begun to dip sharply during the past six months. Now, anything he did or said was subject to controversy, misinterpretation, and attack from all sides; even members of his own party, led by maverick Kentucky senator Peter Kineen, had opened another split and were vowing to keep Augustine from seeking a second term by wresting the nomination away from him at the forthcoming convention in Saint Louis.

  It was terrible to see, Justice thought, what this constant pressure was doing to the President. He believed Nicholas Augustine had been and still was a strong leader. The world was at peace, the inflation rate had remained in a steady decline, the administration had been totally open and honest in every respect, and if no important domestic policies were being implemented, it was the fault of a hostile Congress. Augustine had made mistakes, yes—but was there ever a President who had not made mistakes? The ills of the country and of the world could not be laid to him; he had done all he could, and had tried to do more, and that was all anyone could expect of any President.

  Justice said quietly, “Should I leave you alone now, sir?”

  Augustine lowered his hands. “Yes,” he said, “maybe you should. I have an appointment with Mr. Harper in a few minutes and there are some papers I should look over before he gets here.”

  Justice stood and nodded respectfully and went out of the office, past George Radebaugh, the appointments secretary, who did not look up from his desk, and into the outer corridor. The image of the President’s strained face hung heavily in his mind.

  Two

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

  “Justice.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Sir?”

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

  “I’m not a Jew, Mr. Harper.”

  “Do you know any Jews?”

  “Yes sir.”

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

  “No sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “So it is.”

  “Did you read those briefs?”

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

  “Of course that’s what I mean.”

  “I glanced at them, yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Meaning Israel or the Indian problem?”

  “Both, as a matter of fact.”

  “I told you, I’ll handle things.”

  Harper was silent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Three

  Nicholas Augustine sipped wine from his crystal goblet and looked around the table and wished fervently that he and Claire had decided to dine alone tonight. The evening had begun amiably enough with cocktails in the Green Room, but once they had all come in here to the State Dining Room for dinner, conversation had inevitably gotten around to Israel. It was Briggs who had brought up the subject, over the consommé, and of course Wexford had had to have his say over the salad; only Dougherty and Claire’s secretary, Elizabeth Miller, had remained silent on the topic, although it was apparent how the two of them felt. By the time the chateaubriand was served, silence had mercifully resettled—but Augustine had long since lost his appetite for anything except the wine.

  A damned shame too, because he liked chateaubriand. He even liked the State Dining Room, with its restful green colors and its oak paneling. Claire preferred to eat here instead of in the Family Dining Room, which was why they had company for dinner most evenings; it would hardly have been appropriate, she said, for them to dine here alone. But if they had dined alone, damn it, he might have been able to enjoy his meal and to unwind a bit, instead of suffering a fresh onslaught of aggravation.

  Why wouldn’t they leave him alone, all of them, for just a little while?

  Out of the tail of his eye he saw the huge portrait of Abraham Lincoln that hung over the fireplace, and he smiled wryly. You and me, Abe, he thought, and raised his glass in a small silent toast.

  He took another sip of wine and put the goblet down; but as he did so it struck the edge of his plate, making a sharp ringing sound that cut heavily into the silence. Everyone looked at him as though he had rapped for attention—Claire, Austin Briggs, Julius Wexford, Ed Dougherty, Elizabeth Miller, and Wexford’s gray little wife Rachel. Rachel blinked at him like a startled bird; her eyes were as gray as her hair, as her complexion, and the white evening gown she wore only served to complete the colorless study. In contrast, even Elizabeth, an angular brunette in her middle thirties, wearing a dark blue gown and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses that gave her a properly secretarial air, seemed attractive. And Claire, Augustine noted with some pride, looked even more stunning than usual: blonde hair done up with a jeweled comb, china-blue eyes alert and inquisitive, skin so smooth it seemed translucent; gracious and poised as always, although she seemed somewhat subdued tonight. Her dress was blue-green, the same color as her eyes, and it seemed to flow against her when she moved, like seawater.

  She said, “Yes, Nicholas?”

  Well, Augustine thought, I might as well have my say too; Briggs had the consommé, Wexford had the salad, and I’d better take the chateaubriand before Dougherty does. The evening is ruined anyway. As if there had been no fiveminute lull in the conversation, he said, “Have any of you heard the story about the old Jew, filled with poverty and misfortune, who one day shakes his fist at the heavens and says, ‘God, I know we’re Your chosen people, but will You please, for Your own sake, choose someone else.’ ”

  Rachel Wexford made a small choking sound, covered her mouth with a napkin. Wexford scowled and patted her hand. Dougherty and Elizabeth looked at each other and then down at their wine goblets. Briggs opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and finally put a forkful of potato inside it. Claire watched him steadily, neither surprised nor shocked, merely attentive.

  Augustine said, “No? Well how about the one where the two old Jews—old enemies who have hated each other for forty years—meet on a railroad platform in Czarist Russia?” He finished his wine. “These two old Jews, you see, hadn’t spoken to each other for years, but finally one of them is unable to hold his silence and he says to the other, ‘Moshe, where are you going on this fine day?’ And Moshe, you understand, is a stubborn man, he doesn’t want to give his old enemy the satisfaction of a quick answer; so he considers for a time and then he says, ‘Well, Schmuel, to tell you the truth, which is more than you deserve, I am going this fine day to the province of Minsk.’ Schmuel looks at him then, shrewdly, and he says, ‘I know what you are, Moshe; you are a liar whose word can never be trusted; you would betray me at every opportunity. You hope to deceive me into thinking you are really going to the province of Pinsk, but I know you so well that the truth is, you are obviously going to Minsk after all.’ ”

  Augustine burst out laughing. None of the others joined in, although Claire seemed to smile faintly; they continued to stare at him.

  “Do you understand?” Augustine said. “Schmuel says,

  ‘You think I am to believe you are not going to Minsk, where you say you’re going, but to Pinsk, but I know you lie so you must really be going to Minsk.“’

  Silence.

  Augustine shrugged. “I believe I’ll have a little more wine,” he said, and motioned to Edmund, the staff waiter, who was standing quietly to one side. Edmund approached and poured more beaujolais into Augustine’s glass.

  Briggs said stiffly, “Mr. President, I hope you don’t intend to tell either of those stories publicly ...”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Austin, they’re jokes. Wry comments on the nature of the Hebraic mind.”

  “And very funny, I’m sure,” Rachel Wexford said.

  Augustine thought: Christ, she’s a twit.

  Wexford wiped his hands carefully on his napkin, put the napkin down, and took a long, careful sip of water. He was a heavyset man, florid, jowly, wearing a dark suit with a patterned red tie; his face had taken
on more color, so that it seemed now to have achieved a hue remarkably similar to that of the beaujolais. The two of them, Julius and Rachel, made quite a pair, Augustine thought. One of them gray, one of them red.

  Wexford said, “Well I hardly think either story is funny, Mr. President. They seem more like racial slurs—”

  “They are not racial slurs,” Augustine said. “Why does anybody who tells an ethnic joke automatically become guilty of a racial slur? And by extension, of bigotry?”

  “The Jewish people are very important to us,” Wexford said sententiously. He took a cigar from his coat pocket, rolled it between his fingers, and then put it away again when his wife frowned at him. “In terms of the demographics of the vote, and because they contribute disproportionately well to their actual percentage of the population—”

  “I am not demeaning the Jews,” Augustine said. He was beginning to lose his temper. “I fully understand their political importance, Julius, and their racial importance, and the public record makes it clear that I am not an anti-Semite. I’m only trying to make a damned point here—”

  Claire reached across to touch his hand with cool fingers. “I think you’ve made it, Nicholas,” she said quietly. “Don’t get yourself upset.”

  “I’m not upset,” Augustine said, and put his hand on top of hers, squeezed it briefly and then pushed it away. “Damn it, what’s wrong with a little honesty? A few years back Moynihan made a comment about ‘benign neglect’ where blacks are concerned, and right away people twisted his words into something totally alien to what he meant. That is exactly what is happening to me right now: I’m being convicted of a crime I didn’t commit on the basis of semantics. The truth is, what I said in yesterday’s press conference is absolutely defensible.”

  “Anything is defensible, Mr. President,” Dougherty said. He was a thin deliberate man in his early forties, like Briggs a bachelor, though not for much longer if Elizabeth Miller had her way: they had been keeping steady company for the past year. “But certain defenses create more complications than others.”