The question becomes, the President thought, of whom is he afraid? Of me—or his dubious allies in this conspiracy?
“Charlie,” the President said, “I want to talk to you about your coup d’etat.”
To his credit, the Secretary of Defense did not so much as blink. “Sir?” Charlie said mildly. “Sit down,” the President said. Charlie sat.
“I shouldn’t call it your coup, should I? I know your position is ambiguous. And I don’t expect you to admit complicity in a plot to overthrow the civilian government. It was General Chafee, wasn’t it, who approached you with the idea that you might act as President pro tern? A Cabinet member, a civilian—an ideal front man. You’d lend them an air of legitimacy in a country where the words ‘military junta’ still have a nasty ring to them.” The President put his palms flat on the desk and leaned forward. The gesture, he knew, was aggressive, imperial. “Quite honestly, Charlie, my sources don’t know how you responded to the offer—only that it was made. And that General Chafee was smiling when he shook your hand.”
“For the record,” Charlie Boyle said, “I deny all this.”
“Noted. But that’s beside the point. Your loyalty is in question, but it’s also immaterial.”
“ The Secretary of Defense frowned. He can’t decide, the President thought, whether he’s been insulted. But he’s curious, too.
“In that case,” Charlie said stiffly, “what is the purpose of this meeting?”
“It’s late,” the President admitted. “You probably want to be home with Evelyn and the kids. I can’t say I blame you. But in times like these I think we can be forgiven for some long hours.” He tapped his desk with the point of a fountain pen while Charlie squirmed. “I’ve known you for five years and I’ve studied your career. You were the Cabinet appointment I was most proud of, Charlie, did you know that? I’m not suggesting you’re a scoundrel. Only that your loyalties may be divided. Is that so far off the mark?”
“You’re asking for a statement I can’t make. For the record, I resent the implication.”
“Forget the record. There is no record. This is in camera.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?”
“You’re supposed to listen.” The President allowed an edge into his voice. The essential fact about Charlie Boyle was that he recognized authority. His life was a long hymn to authority: recognizing it, respecting it, acquiring it. I know you, the President thought. I know your poor-boy Tidewater roots, and I know what the Marine Corps must have meant to the rootless child you once were. More than a stepping-stone into civilian respectability, though it had been that too. All the old totems retained their magic. Charlie may have decided the man in the President’s office was expendable, but the office itself, the idea of the office, the Commander in Chief, still carried a ponderous symbolic weight. And for the moment, at least, the President thought, that weight is mine to wield.
He chose his words carefully.
“I want you to consider that this effort might be futile. Worse, doomed. I want you to consider that the impressive people the JCS may have lined up are not the only impressive people in the country, military or civilian. There is still a powerful sentiment on behalf of representative government. Your uprising would not be unopposed and it would not be bloodless. And it would not be worthwhile.”
Charlie Boyle sat for a long time in the ticking silence. When at last he spoke, he spoke cautiously. “People say you’re in contact with the Artifact. They say you know something you’re not telling. And there are rumors about some kind of disease. There’s been a lid on the CDC since last week. You and the brass at the NIH and nobody’s talking.”
“Maybe I do know something. Maybe I’m preparing to communicate that knowledge in my own good time. That’s my prerogative, is it not?”
“You haven’t said one fucking word to the Cabinet. Even your own advisors, the NSC—”
“Given the climate of the times, is that surprising?”
“People want to know who’s governing the country.”
“Damn it, Charlie, I am!”
“People debate that. People think you might be a fifth-columnist.”
“People who are compelled to seek power are prone to say any damn thing. Political campaigns aren’t conducted without lies. Neither are military uprisings.”
“You could put these rumors to rest.”
“I’m addressing the nation in two days. Isn’t that sufficient?”
“Maybe not.” Lured into too many tacit admissions, Charlie sat stiffly in his chair—the offended Puritan. “You admit you know something.”
“That’s right. I know insubordination when I see it. And I know how to respond to it.”
Charlie wavered but did not quite abandon his hostile stare. “You have no allies. Sir.”
“Are you banking on that?” There was no response.
“Tell them I’m aware of what’s happening,” the President said. “That’s your task, Charlie. Tell General Chafee and General Weismann and that Pentagon cabal that their plans have been under scrutiny in this office for quite a while. Tell him they can’t get what they want without a great deal of bloodshed.” The President focused on the Secretary of Defense—caught his eyes and held them. “You’ve served this country faithfully for most of your life. Do you really want to plunge it into civil war? Do you really want to be the next Jefferson Davis—and go down the same way?”
The Secretary of Defense opened his mouth and closed it.
“Tell General Chafee—” This was the hardest part. “Tell him negotiation is not out of the question. But violence will be met with violence. And Charlie?”
“Sir?”
“Thank you for your time.”
The Secret Service contingent had been doubled in the halls of the White House. The President wondered if that was a good idea. Too many unfamiliar faces about. It was a risk in itself. And it created an atmosphere of crisis—but perhaps that was unavoidable. He thought of Lincoln arriving in disguise for his inauguration, sharpshooters stationed around the Capitol dome. Times were bad, but times had been worse. Though, it was true, times had never been stranger.
Much of what he had said to Charlie Boyle was bluff, and the generals would know it; but it might be enough to cast doubt in certain quarters. It was a delay he was after here, not a resolution. The next few days were vital. It would be tragic if internecine squabbles such as this one caused unnecessary bloodshed, because those lives… well, they would be unrecoverable.
If it came to that, the President had decided he would issue the necessary orders and surrender his office, minimizing losses. But there were those who would fight on, for the best of reasons; and fighting, they would die; and dead, they would not be resurrected.
The crises we administer, the President thought, are never the ones we expect.
He did not consider himself a man especially well-equipped to administer this one. His career had been enormously successful but in every other respect ordinary. Scion of a New England political family, groomed from childhood for public service, he had graduated from Harvard with a law degree, reliable connections, and enough ambition to light up a city block. But it was an ambition hoarded; he was not impatient. He had moved through the ranks of the Democratic Party with grace, made more friends than enemies. He had run for public office first in his home state, defeating an incumbent Republican so decisively that the Party seriously began to consider his presidential mettle. And still he bided his time. He cultivated acquaintances in the Party hierarchy and among the baronial eminences of oil, law, manufacturing.
He had lost the nomination by a narrow margin in one primary but won it handily four years later. Western oil interests had defected from the complacent Republicans that year, and the South, reeling from the flight of industry to Mexico, had come back into the Democratic fold. And at the level of the ballot box, perhaps personalities had something to do with it. The President was a large man, easy with a crowd, ebullient, humorous. His opponent had been lean to the point of emaciation, prim, and too easily confused. Television debates had amounted to a rout; the Republican campaign tried to withdraw from the last of the three.