Against that terror the anti-Brewster arguments, no matter how legion and logical, had carried no weight. It was true Brewster had usurped the prerogatives of the electorate: having lost the popular election he was overruling its results by act of Congress. It was true as Fitzroy Grant insisted that Brewster’s action was in defiance of every reasonable interpretation of the spirit of the Constitution’s safeguards. Maybe it was true also that Brewster’s ability to acquire power far exceeded his ability to exercise it wisely; at least Fitz Grant suspected as much.
Yet what Brewster had done was not illegal, not unconstitutional, not technically refutable. He had seized upon the law—or a loophole in it—and had won because Congress had seized on an emotional loophole. The legislators had accepted the emergency plan primarily because it covered an emergency they had hoped and expected not to have meet. Like everyone else they had convinced themselves that Fairlie would be recovered alive. The irony was, they probably wouldn’t have voted for the measure if they had known Fairlie was about to die—and so Hollander would have been President after all.
The Senate’s opposition had been led by Grant, who was respected even if unheeded; over in the House the resistance had been led by a handful of hysterical far-right Congressmen who had quite literally been hooted off the floor. Ways and Means had reported out the House resolution within hours of the President’s appeal and the roll-call vote had been taken with the relentless speed of a panzer blitz. The Acting Speaker, Philip Krayle of New York, had directed Ways and Means to form a subcommittee ready to meet on ten minutes’ notice with the Senate’s companion committee the instant the Senate bill had been ratified. It had all taken place with guilty haste and scores of them had slipped away furtively the instant their work had been done.
Satterthwaite hated equally Brewster’s lunatic confidence and Fitz Grant’s lunatic misgivings. Congress had taken the better of two choices. No denying that. But to prevent one form of tyranny they had created another.
Abruptly Satterthwaite stopped in front of the window. He made a number of grunts, audible punctuation to his thoughts. He was staring out at the city with the intense concentration of a lecher watching a woman disrobe but he wasn’t seeing much of anything: his mind was turned inward and abruptly he shot out of the room and hurried toward the elevators.
The clean-up crew still mopped in the war room. Satterthwaite popped across the hall into the conference room and reached for the telephone and the federal directory. He found Philip Krayle’s number and dialed.
It rang a dozen times. No answer. Well of course that would be Krayle’s office. It was one o’clock in the morning. Satterthwaite spoke an oath, looked in the city phone book. No number for Representative Krayle.
Unlisted. Damn the son of a bitch. Satterthwaite pounded his fist on the table.
Finally he dialed a number he knew: Liam McNeely’s home phone.
McNeely answered on the second ring.
“It’s Bill Satterthwaite, Liam.”
“Hello Bill.” A voice utterly devoid of everything. Well it was understandable: McNeely had been Fairlie’s closest political advisor and friend and had only learned of Fairlie’s death within the past couple of hours. The President had gone on television at eleven to make two announcements. Someone—possibly Perry Hearn—had thought to call McNeely because McNeely had called Satterthwaite to ask for details. Satterthwaite had stuck to the prepared script: Fairlie had been dead before the rescuers arrived, the kidnappers had injected him with an overdose of drugs.
“Liam, I’m sorry to bother you at a time like this but it’s vital. I need to reach Philip Krayle. I thought you might have his home number.”
“Well I——”
Satterthwaite waited for McNeely to wrench his thoughts onto the new subject. In the end McNeely said, “Hang on a minute, I’ll get it,” in a faraway tone.
In a short while McNeely was back on the line. He spoke seven digits and Satterthwaite wrote them down on the cover of the directory by the phone.
“That all you wanted Bill?”
“Yes, thanks. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
“It’s all right. I wasn’t about to sleep tonight.”
“I’m—wait a minute, Liam, I think you can help me.”
“Help you do what?”
“I can’t talk on the phone. Are you dressed?”
“Yes.”
“I’m in the Executive Office Building. The conference room across the hall from the NSC boardroom. Can you get over here right away? I need someone to help me do some telephoning. A lot of calls to make.”
“I don’t know if I’d be much good talking to anyone tonight, Bill. I hate to cop out on you but——”
“It’s for Cliff Fairlie,” Satterthwaite said, “and it’s important.”
By the time McNeely arrived—improbably natty in a mohair suit and Italian shoes—the clean-up crew had finished in the boardroom. Satterthwaite took him inside and closed the door. “I’m glad you could come.”
“Very mysterious. What the hell have you got in mind?”
They were not exactly friends although they had had a great deal of contact since the election. It had been taken for granted McNeely would assume Satterthwaite’s role in the new administration.
“You’ve been thinking about Fairlie I’m sure.”
“Yes.”
“There’ll be rumors Brewster had him killed.”
“I suppose there will. There always are, when one man benefits from another’s death.”
“Those rumors will have no basis in fact,” Satterthwaite said. “I have to clear that up with you before we go on.”
McNeely’s one-sided smile was merely polite. “We called him a lot of names in the campaign but I don’t think any of them was murderer.”
“He’s a surprisingly honest man, Liam. To use an archaic turn of phrase he’s a man of goodwill. I realize from your point of view he’s too much a prisoner of old-fashioned political values, but you’ve got to credit his integrity.”
“Why are you saying all this to me?”
“Because more and more I’ve become convinced it’s wrong that a President who’s been defeated should be permitted to succeed himself.”
“Come again?”
“Sit down, take your coat off. I’ll explain it as best I can.”
Krayle arrived at twenty before two, a lumpy man in a rumpled topcoat. “What is it, Bill?”
“You know Liam McNeely of course.”
“Sure. We campaigned together.”
“I’m’ no expert on congressional regulations,” Satterthwaite said. “I need facts from you about the breakdown—the table of organization. The chief officer in the House is the Speaker, is that right?”
“Sure, sure.” Krayle looked very tired. He moved to a chair and rubbed his face and propped an elbow on the long table.
Satterthwaite glanced at McNeely. The slim New Yorker was watching them both with keen intensity.
“This could be damned important to all of us,” Satterthwaite said. “When Milton Luke died why wasn’t a successor elected immediately? Why were you installed as Acting Speaker?”
Krayle shook his head. His mouth made a wry shape. “I see what you’re getting at. You’re a strange one to ask me that question—one of Brewster’s own boys?”
“Go on then,” Satterthwaite said.
“Well I’m a little new to the job of course. They needed somebody to fill the interim post and I was handy. I’m not really qualified for it. I haven’t got much seniority—there are a lot of people ahead of me. Mostly Southerners.”
“Why didn’t they elect a permanent successor to Luke?”
“Two reasons. First we don’t have a full head count. We lost a lot of people in the various bombings if you recall.” Very dry. Krayle didn’t have a reputation for caustic sarcasms; it must have been his way of throwing up defenses against the chain of traumatic shocks that had affected them all.
“Maybe you don’t know everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours,” Krayle said. “We had to drag a hundred Congressmen back to Washington. A lot of them went home for the funerals of their friends. Until this evening we didn’t have a quorum in the chamber. We’ve lost seventy-two Congressmen. Fourteen others are still in the hospitals. Thank God none of them’s still on the critical list. But the point is, we’re eighty-six bodies short—and the majority of the dead ones were Democrats. You get my point?”