“Mr. President,” Fairlie said slowly, “I’m beginning to get the feeling you’re talking about a wholesale nationwide roundup of suspicious characters. Is that what you mean when you talk about a national emergency? Emergency powers?”
“Cliff,” and now the voice was deep and filled to overflowing with sincerity, “I think we’re all together on this, I think the people are with us. Liberals and moderates and conservatives alike, all of us. We’re saturated with this damned violence. We’re all grieved and sickened by these atrocities. Now’s the time, Cliff—we’ve all got to join forces to freeze out the extremists, the violent animals. And if we don’t, then God help this country. If we don’t stop them right now then they’ll know for a fact nobody’s ever going to keep them from kicking over the pail.”
“I see.”
“Now at the same time,” the President continued briskly, “I mean to set an example of speedy justice with these bombers we’ve caught, because if we intend to deter other animals from trying the same kind of thing we’ve got to show that punishment can be immediate and complete. Now I don’t mean to try the case on television, mind you, but I’m going to make it clear to the people that there’s absolutely no cause for alarm—that we’ve taken the steps necessary to preserve the peace, that we’ve already got these murderers behind bars and we’re going to have their guts for guitar strings. I’m going to give them tough talk, Cliff, because I think it’s what the people need to hear, and I want to get in there ahead of the bleeding hearts before they start drowning the newspapers with crocodile tears about these poor unfortunate misunderstood children and how if they’re guilty then we’re all guilty, it’s society’s fault, all that crap.” The President drew a shuddering long breath to continue, “Before they can get up steam to do that I’m going to put these animals on trial in a public courtroom quicker than you can say Jack Robinson.”
“Well I don’t see how you can do that overnight, Mr. President. They’ve got to have a fair trial. They’ll have to be defended—the attorneys will have to have time to prepare their case.”
“I recognize that, Cliff, but I don’t mean to let any water flow under the bridge. I think you ought to have a little talk tonight with your Attorney General designate, because he’s going to have to pick this thing up in the middle and we need to make sure he’s not going to be wishy-washy.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Fairlie said. “But I’d like to come back to this national emergency you’re declaring. I still need to know the exact boundaries of it.”
“Well Cliff, you named it before. A roundup.”
Fairlie sucked breath into his chest and took his stand. “Mr. President, I don’t agree with the wisdom of that. I think it’s premature.”
“Premature? My God, Cliff, they’ve slaughtered dozens of the best people in the American Government. Premature?”
“You can’t very well blame the slaughter on every individual in the FBI’s files of suspicious radicals.”
“The point is we’ve decided not to let them take advantage. We intend to put them on ice and keep them there until this case has been tried and we’ve demonstrated our toughness by executing these bombers.” Then, into Fairlie’s stubborn silence, President Brewster added, “I don’t hold with killing, you know that, but there would be one thing worse than killing these savages, and that would be not killing them.”
“I haven’t disputed that part of it, Mr. President.”
“Cliff, I need your support on this. You know that.” The President breathed hard into the phone. “The Establishment protects us, Cliff. We’re obliged to protect it.”
“I think a roundup at this point would have a terrible effect on the country. It could only be interpreted as the overreaction of a government in panic.”
“Not at all. It would demonstrate our self-respect. To ourselves and to the rest of the world. That’s damned important right now. How can any society expect to hold together without self-respect? It’s a matter of showing muscle, Cliff, and that’s something we’ve been too reluctant to do.”
“Maybe with good reason. I think a roundup right now would give the radicals exactly the kind of provocation they want. Oh, keep surveillance on the really suspicious ones of course, but let them alone. Mr. President, the radicals have been trying for years to goad the Government into violence. If we start herding them into camps it’ll be exactly what they’ve been waiting for—there’ll be outraged cries of police state and fascist suppression and we can’t afford that now.”
“Cliff, I think you’re more concerned about their outraged cries than you are about their bombs.”
“I haven’t heard of any bombs since the Capitol, Mr. President. There doesn’t seem to be any chain reaction.”
“They’ve hardly had time yet, have they.” The President was getting curt now; he had been long enough in power to get out of the habit of conciliatory argument.
“I’d like to give it a little time, Mr. President. If we see a chain reaction starting in the next day or two—if the snipers and bombers start coming out from under those rocks you mentioned—then I’ll cooperate with you right up to the hilt. But if we don’t see any sign of that kind of trouble then I’m afraid I’m going to have to fight you on this.”
An attenuated silence, and Fairlie could all but see Brewster’s agonized face. Finally the President said in a lower tone than he had used before, “I’ll have to get back to you, Cliff. I’ll have to consult with my people. If I can’t get back to you before my broadcast I suppose you’ll get my answer from that. If we decide we must go ahead with the program as I’ve outlined it to you, then you’ll do as you see fit, I guess, but I’d like to remind you this is a damned precarious time for all of us and there’s nothing we need quite so badly right now as a show of undivided solidarity.”
“I’m very aware of that, Mr. President.”
The courteous goodbyes were distant and chilled. Fairlie sat by the telephone and brooded at it. He realized that if he were in Washington today it would be much harder for him not to be swept up in the urgent sense of horror and the unreasoning emotional demand for reactive vengeance.
It had been up to him to support Brewster, but his refusal reversed their positions. Brewster was the Chief Executive and had the right to make final decisions but only for the next sixteen days, after which the decisions would be Fairlie’s, and Brewster had to worry about that now because this decision wasn’t the kind he could present to his successor as a fait accompli. If Brewster arrested thousands of people and Fairlie quickly turned them loose, it could give Brewster and his party a terrible black eye; at the same time it could put a libertarian luster on Fairlie’s administration—perhaps not enough to convince the radicals that Fairlie could be trusted, but certainly enough to persuade them to postpone any full-scale anti-Fairlie warfare for an interim while they sat back and watched to see how Fairlie performed.
These considerations had to be coursing through Howard Brewster’s mind right now in the White House and they were considerations not easy to dismiss. Brewster was almost singularly aware of history and his place in it; given time to reflect—and Fairlie’s brake had surely given him that—Brewster might decide to recant because the alternative was to risk condemnation for one final reckless act.
There was no sure way to predict which way Brewster would go but Fairlie had offered him a way out—and Brewster, the political animal, would avail himself of it if he could.
This was not the time to fly back to Washington. The President’s televised address would take place before Fairlie’s jet could get him farther than the west coast of Ireland. If Brewster ordered the roundup Fairlie would have to return to the States at once. But if Brewster softened his approach there would be no need to break off the planned visits to Rome and Madrid, and the announcement a few hours ago that Perez-Blasco had granted diplomatic recognition to Peking made it all the more important that Fairlie complete his schedule and resolve the question of the Spanish bases. In the meantime, in the next few hours, there was nothing to do but formulate his own statement and wait.