“Maybe they’re responsibilities only because we think they’re responsibilities.”

Fairlie shook his head. “I’ve been tempted that way but it doesn’t hold water. It’s an emotional isolationism—anti-militarism. We like to vilify our own military power but you know it’s created a balance of sorts—not very satisfactory, I guess, but at least it’s given us conditions where we’ve got some chance of success negotiating with the Chinese and the Russians. We’re a stabilizing factor, we make our presence felt and I imagine it eases the crises a lot more often than it aggravates them.”

McNeely replied with enough of a grunt to let Fairlie know he was listening, without interrupting Fairlie’s train of thought.

“It’s not the power that festers, I think. It’s the inconsistency of its use. You can’t be effective in foreign affairs without some philosophical direction—otherwise your actions are unpredictable and the other side is going to miscalculate all the time.”

A knock: it was Rifkind at the door.

“Something wrong, Meyer?”

“A little trouble, sir. It looks like the helicopter broke down.”

McNeely sat up. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Cord explained it to me, sir, but I couldn’t make much sense out of it.”

McNeely poked an arm into his coat and strode out onto the deck. Cord and Anderson were on top of the fuselage poking into the engine. They had grease all over them.

“What’s wrong?” McNeely was sharp; time was getting tight.

“Beats shit out of me,” Anderson mumbled. Then he looked over his shoulder and recognized McNeely. “We started to warm her up, we were going to top up the tanks, and all of a sudden she starts letting go like a banshee. Man what a racket. Didn’t you hear it?”

Fairlie’s room was at the back; McNeely hadn’t heard anything. He said, “What does it look like?”

“I ain’t sure. Oil pressure checks out, but she’s sounding like she got no oil in there. Everything scraping. Like sand in the works, you know?”

“You don’t see anything?”

“No sir.”

“How soon can we get another machine up here?”

The Sixth Fleet was off Barcelona—that was a little more than a hundred miles away. Anderson said, “About an hour, I expect.”

“Get one.”

He went back to the suite and reported to Fairlie. Rifkind trailed along and said, “Of course there’s a possibility of sabotage, but right now we don’t even know what’s wrong with the machine.”

“See what you can find out.”

“Sir.” Rifkind went.

Cord arrived to say they had radioed a request to the Fleet and a replacement chopper was on its way. Fairlie checked the time and said to Rifkind, “You’d better call Madrid.”

“Yes sir. If they chug right along we oughtn’t to be more than a half hour late.”

Rifkind and Cord left; McNeely said, “It’ll be good for a laugh in Madrid. Another case of marvelous American technology.”

“Breakdowns happen. It doesn’t matter.” Fairlie slid the speech into his inside pocket.

The view through the window was spectacular: vast broken planes, an upheaval aglitter with snow, a craggy wilderness; Fairlie, McNeely thought, had a face that matched it.

Fairlie spoke abruptly. “Liam, you remember what Andy Bee said about a President running for a second term?”

“That it ties his hands? Yes, I remember. Why?” Andrew Bee, one-time Senator and now a Congressman from Los Angeles County, had been Fairlie’s strongest opponent in the Republican presidential primaries and had only deferred to Fairlie at the last minute at Denver. A big lumberjack, Andrew Bee; and a thoughtful force in American politics.

Fairlie said, “I’m not going to run for a second term, Liam.”

“What, tired of the job already?”

“Bee was right. It’s got to hamstring a man. You can’t be expected to be both President and politician.”

“The hell. That’s the object of the game.”

“No. I’m going to announce it right up front. I want you to put it in the draft of the Inaugural Address.”

“With all due respect I think you’re nuts. Why commit yourself?”

“It frees my hand.”

“To do what?”

Fairlie smiled a little with that unexpected self-deprecation that sometimes, out of context, warmed his face. As if reminding himself not to equate his person, with the power of the office he was about to assume. “Andy Bee and I had some long talks. The man has some important ideas.”

“I’m sure he does. Next time he runs for President maybe he’ll get a chance to put them into practice.”

“Why wait?”

“To do what?” McNeely asked again.

“Mainly to rip apart the committees.”

“That’s a pipe dream.” McNeely knew all about that, it had been Andrew Bee’s private crusade for years: the unraveling of the archaic committee system in Congress which governed not by majority but by seniority. The satrapies of Congress were tyrannies of old men, most of them rural, many of them corrupt, some of them stupid. No law could pass without the support of these old men, yet nothing in the Constitution required this shackling of Congress; for years the younger members, led by Andrew Bee, had called for reform.

“It’s not a pipe dream, Liam.”

“If you want to get legislation through, you’ve got to have committee support. If you attack the chairmen they’ll eviscerate you.”

“But if I’m not running for reelection what have I got left to lose?”

“All the rest of your programs.”

“Not if I settle this one first,” Fairlie said. “And don’t forget those old boys have to be reelected too. I think they understand the sentiments of the times. Look at the kind of support Andy Bee has with the public. He’s made his stand on the issue for years and the public’s solidly behind him.”

“You’re the one they elected President. Not Andrew Bee.”

Fairlie only smiled; he turned and reached for his coat. “Let’s go outside, I want some air.”

“Don’t you realize how cold it is out there?”

“Oh come on, Liam.”

McNeely went to the phone and summoned assistants to organize Fairlie’s belongings and bring them along to the deck. When he put down the phone Fairlie was almost to the door. McNeely said, “You really want me to put that in the Inaugural Address?”

“Yes.”

“Well what the hell. It won’t do any harm. You can always change your mind later.”

Fairlie laughed and went out. McNeely caught up on the mezzanine and joined the circle of Secret Service men moving along with him.

Cord was canted over the open engine compartment of “the chopper; Anderson, on the deck, was rubbing his hands and exhaling steam. McNeely looked at his watch, buttoned his coat, turned the collar up around his ears. Fairlie was looking up the ski slope, squinting, smiling with visible wistfulness.

McNeely walked over to Anderson. “Find anything yet?”

“I sure can’t figure it. Everything checks out good. But she’s still screechin’ ever time we start her up.”

“Sounds like gasoline trouble. Did you check the fuel pump?”

“First thing.” Anderson made a gesture of baffled disgust with his hands. “Anyhow they’re flying a mechanic up passenger on the bird they sending in to replace this one. He’ll figure it out.”

McNeely nodded. A helicopter was not such a fragile mechanism as it appeared. True, it lacked the dubious visible stability of wings and for that reason a great many people distrusted it but the truth was a helicopter had a better glide chance than a jet plane: if a jet engine quit in midair the plane would hit the ground like a bomb; if a helicopter lost its engine in midair the rotors would freewheel and you could let yourself down dead-stick, and a chopper in distress required very little flat surface area to land on. McNeely respected the fluttery machines.

He patted the metal skin of the big chopper and turned away. Anderson was striding around the far corner of the hotel, possibly headed for one of the rear workshops to hunt up additional tools.