The President said, “Right now—and right now is the point—the Reds have got us outshipped and outgunned and altogether militarily outclassed in the Mediterranean. The only thing we’ve got to balance it is the Spanish bases.”
“It’s not as if we’re on the brink of war though.” Ethridge half-closed his right eyelid, trying to drive the pain away.
“Dex. We have been on the brink of war continuously since Nineteen and Forty-seven.” The President was very tired; his voice had the quality of a rusty hinge in motion but Ethridge found it pleasantly abrasive, like a rough towel after a hot bath.
They sat in private conference in the Lincoln Sitting Room; they had been there more than two hours, uninterrupted except for a staff aide’s intrusion with an item of news from Justice: an anonymous caller had warned Los Angeles police there was a plastic bomb concealed in the Federal Court Building, had said there would be an epidemic of bombs across the country if the Washington Seven were not released; the threat sounded as if it represented the voice of a vast nationwide conspiracy. But it turned out there was no bomb in the Federal Court Building; at any rate the Government had begun massive surveillance of known radicals a week ago and there was no sign of organized terrorist momentum. In fact the tragedy at the Capitol seemed to have brought quite a few hot-bloods to their senses; even the underground press was calling for a halt to violence.
Yet for nearly a half hour the President had digressed from the subject at hand—Fairlie’s abduction—to talk a hard line, angry with the “sellouts who grovel at the feet of these radical punks.” Ethridge had listened with dubious interest. When Brewster was warmed up his rhetoric improved but his marksmanship became erratic. Tonight the President was in an execrable temper. The air was poisoned by his cigar smoke.
The President had battled his demons with fervid passion: “We should have stomped the bastards right off. Back in the Sixties. But we’re supposed to be tolerant and liberal. So we let them walk on us.”
Brewster had been talking to his knees. He did not lift his head; he didn’t stir, but his eyes shifted quickly toward Ethridge as if to pin him. “Their Goddamned dogmatic righteousness. It makes a man sick, Dex. They talk about ‘liberate,’ they mean blow somebody up. They talk about participatory democracy, they mean turning everything over to five delinquents with a can of gasoline. They’ve made us accept their dirty minds and their dirty language—when was the last time you were shocked when you heard the words ‘fascist pigs’? They’ve radicalized all of us and it’s time to stop it.”
Ethridge’s headache was a maddening distraction. He found it hard to summon the alertness Brewster’s talk seemed to require. Brewster had harped on the subject of the radicals until a few minutes ago when he had shifted abruptly to the Spanish bases. It bothered Ethridge because he knew the President was not given to idle ramblings. There was a reason for Brewster’s display of anger—it was a preamble to something specific and Ethridge kept trying to predict the President’s next moves but the headache intervened and finally he said, “Do you think someone could get me a couple of aspirins?”
Brewster’s head moved quickly; dark hair fell over his eye. “Don’t you feel well?”
“Sinus headache, that’s all.”
“I’ll ring for the doctor.”
“No.”
“Dex, you were bombed, you got hit on the head, now you’ve got a headache. I want you looked at.”
“Really it’s not necessary. I’ve had sinus trouble all my life—I get a headache every now and then. It always passes.” Ethridge raised one hand a few inches to acknowledge the President’s concern. “It’s nothing, I promise you. The doctors gave me every test known to medical science. I’m quite all right. I only need a couple of aspirins.”
The President reached for his chairside telephone. Ethridge heard him mutter into it; he caught the word “aspirin” and sat back in relief.
He didn’t want another battery of them poking at him, rousting him from one diagnostic machine to another, subjecting him to an infernal variety of pains and peeping eyes and the prisonlike boredom of enforced isolation. There was nothing wrong with him; it was the weather, his perennial sinus. Earlier he had been troubled by lethargy, the great amounts of sleep he had seemed to require after the bomb explosions; he had awakened the morning after the blast with a splitting headache and a curious weakness in his right arm and leg. He had informed the doctors of these symptoms—he wasn’t a prideful fool. There had been some somber talk about the possibility of a stroke or perhaps a “metabolic cerebral lesion.” More skull X rays, another electroencephalogram. Dick Kermode, his doctor, had come into the hospital room beaming on the third morning: Hell there’s nothing wrong with you. A man gets hit on the head, he’s got a right to a little headache. No lesions, no sign of a stroke. Headache gone today? Fine, then we’ll turn you loose—we’ve exhausted all the tests, they’re all negative. But if you have any trouble check back with me immediately, will you? Try a little Privine for that sinus.
Howard Brewster cradled the telephone. “Promise me something, Dex. You’ll call your doctor first thing in the morning and tell him about this headache.”
“It’s not worth——”
“Promise me this little thing, all right?”
He inclined his head. “Very well, then.”
“You’re important, Dex. We don’t want any trouble with your health. If we don’t get Cliff Fairlie back by Inauguration Day you’re going to have to be healthy enough to step into these shoes.”
“We’ll have him back by then, Mr. President. I’m absolutely convinced of that.”
“We’ve got to assume the worst,” Brewster said around his cigar. “That’s why you’re here now. We haven’t got a whole lot of time—you’ve got to be briefed on all the things I briefed Cliff on. My predecessor took six weeks showing me the ropes—I took just about that long with Cliff. Now you and I have got just nine days. You’ll have to visit with Defense and State, you’ll have to spend some time with my Cabinet people and the Security Council, but mainly there’s only one boy who can guide you through this here wilderness and that’s me. You’re going to have to spend so much time at my right hand for the next nine days you’ll get to hate the sight of me, if you don’t already.”
In point of fact Ethridge did not hate the sight of him. He rather liked Howard Brewster. But it had taken years for Ethridge to accrete his impression of the President because the political Brewster was very hard to pin down. Superficially he was the embodiment of American tradition: he had grown up in rural Oregon believing in hard work and patriotism, believing there was opportunity for everyone, believing God loved nothing so much as a good fighter. It was was as if Brewster’s philosophers were Abraham Lincoln and Horatio Alger and Tom Mix. Brewster was an amalgam of liberal traditions and conservative mentality and the values of Main Street. And his weaknesses were typical: the transient piety, the chameleon sincerity, the flexible morality.
In Ethridge’s estimation Howard Brewster was a respectable opposition President: he was not too terrible, considering that nobody could be good enough for the job.
“Long hours, Dex,” the President adjured. “An awful lot to cram into your brain—top-secret stuff, in-progress stuff. That’s why I want you healthy.”
The President leaned forward for emphasis. His hand moved away from his face, carrying the cigar, swathed in smoke. “You can’t afford headaches. You get me?”
Ethridge smiled. “All right, Mr. President.”
A staff aide brought Ethridge’s aspirin and a glass of ice water. Ethridge swallowed the tablets.
“My cigar bother you?”
“Not at all.”