Fairlie had been extraordinarily gentle with her. It didn’t make her trust him. But it made him very hard to hate.

4:45 P.M. EST The Secret Service men were numerous: silently present, indifferent but not inconspicuous. They watched Andrew Bee enter the President’s office.

Brewster’s face had a gray haggard look. “Thanks for coming over, Andy.” It was meaningless courtesy: you didn’t ignore a presidential summons. Bee nodded and muttered a “Mr. President” and took the indicated chair.

Brewster’s head tipped sideways toward the side door. “Winston Dierks just left. We’ve been having a string of conferences here all afternoon. I reckon it’ll go on half the night, so you’ll have to forgive me if what I say to you comes out sounding like a set-piece speech.” The big lined face poked forward; Brewster’s lips pulled back slowly in a smile. “I guess I could have asked for a joint session and talked to everybody at once, but it just ain’t the kind of thing you can do that way.”

Bee waited patiently. His grief-stung eyes lay against the President’s face; he felt at once reproachful and sympathetic.

The President glanced at the television set in the corner. Bee didn’t remember having seen a television set in this office since the departure of Lyndon Johnson; it must have been brought in today. The sound was off and the picture was a still shot of a bathroom product. Brewster said, “The seven prisoners will be landing in Geneva in the next hour or so. I thought I’d watch.”

“It hurts you to have to do that, doesn’t it Mr. President?”

“If it’ll get Cliff Fairlie back I’m all for it.” The President halved his smile. “It’s what happens if we don’t get him back that I’d like to talk to you about, Andy.”

Bee nodded without surprise and the President said, “I suppose you’ve been giving it some thought too.”

“Everybody has. I doubt there’s another subject of conversation anywhere in the country today.”

“I’d like your views.”

“Well they’re probably not the same as yours, Mr. President.” Bee grinned a bit. “They rarely are.”

“I do value your advice, Andy. And I reckon the differences between you and me get to looking pretty small when you compare them with some others.”

“Like Senator Hollander?”

“Like Senator Hollander.”

The President looked unhappy as a soaked cat, Bee thought.

Brewster was waiting for him to speak. With an effort Bee summoned his thoughts. “Mr. President, I don’t have a great deal to offer right now. I do think we’re between a rock and a hard place. If you think of yourself as any kind of liberal at all, you just don’t have any place left to stand. I’ve watched the troops move in all day. I gather every city in the country’s the same way—like a state of siege. I understand they’re arresting anybody who looks cross-eyed.”

“That’s kind of an exaggeration.”

“It may not fit the facts but it suits the mood of things. I think people in this country feel as if they’re in occupied territory. A lot of people are being arrested, or at least watched to the point where they’ve got no privacy left.”

“And you’d like to defend their rights?”

“There was a time when I would have. I’m not so sure now. I think to defend their rights would be to hasten their destruction, the way the country’s temper is right now. Frankly I think most of the radicals are showing admirable restraint.”

“Sensible, maybe. They know they’d get massacred if they tried to resist.”

“That’s just it. It seems to me when we deny them their rights we’re hastening another kind of destruction. The destruction of everybody’s liberties.”

“There haven’t been any mass arrests, Andy, whatever you may have heard.”

“There’ve been enough arrests to cause a great deal of alarm.”

“Fifteen or twenty known radical leaders, that’s about the size of it. I might point out there’ve been enough bombings and kidnappings to cause a great deal of alarm too.”

“I can hardly dispute that, can I.” Absently Bee massaged the right knee that had been shattered four years ago and mended with steel and bone grafts. It still gave him arthritic stabs of pain. “Mr. President, I’d like to say I think your administration has showed admirable restraint too. I know what it must be like for you, with Hollander and that bunch keeping the pressure up all the time for lunatic reprisals.”

“Well thank you Andy. I reckon that brings us around to the speech I’ve got to make to you. About Wendy Hollander. I’m sure you must have been giving that some thought too?”

Bee shook his head, not in denial but in morose agreement.

The President lit a cigar; the pale eyes peered at Bee. “I’ve talked to a dozen, fifteen leaders from both houses this afternoon. I’ve sworn every one of them to secrecy and they’ve agreed. Can I ask the same promise of you, Andy?”

“I think that has to depend on what secret I’m supposed to keep.”

“Have you heard any rumors? No matter how wild they may have seemed.”

“I’ve heard nothing but rumors, Mr. President. That the bombings are a Russian plot, that the White House is gearing up for war, that the Army’s only pretending to move into the cities to protect public officials—the rumor says the real purpose is to get the troops in position to strike simultaneously all across the country, grab every known or suspected radical and herd them all into concentration camps. I’ve heard rumors about Clifford Fairlie and rumors about the Japanese and rumors about——”

“Not that.” The President cut him off smoothly. “Have you met up with any rumors about a stop-Hollander campaign?”

“I’ve heard a lot of wishful thinking along those lines.”

“It was actually suggested to me in this office that we ought to have him assassinated and blame it on the radicals,” Brewster said. “What do you think of that?”

“I’d rather not think of that, Mr. President.”

“Andy, I don’t need to tell you the kind of hell this country’s going to be plunged into if Wendy Hollander occupies this seat Thursday.”

“No. I can picture it vividly enough for myself.”

“There’s a way to prevent that happening,” the President said, and squinted through the smoke of his cigar to see how Bee would take it. “I mean ruling out assassination of course.”

Bee’s jaw rode from side to side with his speculative frown. “Declare him incompetent, you mean? I’d thought of that—I suppose a lot of us have.”

“I doubt we could make that work.”

“So do I. But you say you’ve discovered a way?”

“I need your assurance it stays inside this room until I take the wraps off, Andy. God knows it’s a genuine matter of national security—if anything ever had to be kept top secret this does. May I have your absolute promise?”

“Mr. President, if it’s a scheme that you’re sure will work, why does it need to be kept secret?”

“Because if Hollander gets wind of it too soon he might find ways to head it off. If we can spring it on him by surprise it’ll have a better chance of working.”

“But I gather it requires the cooperation of the Congress.”

“Yes. I’ll give you a list of names of the men I’ve already spoken to. They’ll be the only ones you’ll be allowed to discuss it with. Tomorrow morning I’m going to call a private caucus of leaders from both houses and we’ll discuss it in a general meeting then, but in the meantime I wanted to talk to each of you personally.”

“On that basis I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t go along, Mr. President.”

“I have your word on it then?”

“You have my word on it.” A bit of a smile: “For whatever a politician’s word is worth.”

“Yours has always been worth quite a bit, Andy. You’ve fought me pretty damn hard on a lot of things and you’ve done as much backroom logrolling as I have, but I’ve never known you to back out on a commitment.”