Ex Officio Page 31

  Today was Tuesday, two days since the wedding and the earliest possible moment for the meeting. Holt had driven down here to Washington last night, the others had been arriving since yesterday, and now, at ten on Tuesday morning, they had all gathered here, smiling, greeting one another, asking questions. But there would be no answers until after the showing of the film.

  They were keeping this private. Eugene, who had arranged the use of this screening room—and another room for after—had run the film projector himself, and now he came out of the booth at the rear and said, “Let’s adjourn to the conference room, it’ll be more comfortable to talk there.”

  They all got to their feet, and Meredith Fanshaw called, “Gene, is the point of this that somebody wants to broadcast that thing? Surely we can put the lid on without a meeting.”

  “That isn’t the point,” Eugene told him. “Let’s move to the other room, and then we’ll explain.”

  Eugene led the way, and the others followed him, falling naturally into pairs, like schoolchildren. Holt and his nephew George paired off instinctively, not because of their blood relationship but because of their shared level of knowledge, and at the head of the line Holt saw Robert Pratt walking beside Eugene, undoubtedly for the same reason.

  It was by now nearly noon, and Holt had breakfasted early at the hotel, but he wasn’t at all hungry. He was depressed, and nervous, and he wanted this thing over with as quickly as possible.

  He was also nervous and depressed because he had no idea where they were. Eugene had called each of them, last night or this morning, to give them directions; they were to go to such-and-such an entrance to the Pentagon and tell the guard they were members of Mr. White’s party. Holt had done so, and had been escorted by a stolid-faced, thick-necked, crew-cutted, painfully clean and ironed young soldier up and down an infinity of halls, until they’d reached a lone elevator in a silent cul-de-sac. There the soldier had left him, with instructions to press GG. Holt had rung for the elevator, and when it had come it was self-service. None of the floor buttons had numbers, they all had letter combinations, and when he’d pressed GG the elevator had at once traveled down, though he had begun on the first floor.

  There’d been no indicator inside the elevator to tell him what floors he was passing, or how fast the elevator was going, or how deep he was underground when at last it had stopped and the doors had slid open onto yet another impersonal fluorescent-lit hallway. Another soldier—for a second Holt thought it was the same one—had been seated at a desk facing the elevator, and after Holt had identified himself he was given further directions; all the way down to the right, then left, then the first right.

  It had been like traveling in a dream, the endless corridor lined with closed doors, the unpeopled silence, the meaningless groupings of letters on the doors, and when he’d made the last turn and had seen Eugene White standing by an open doorway far away, that too had at first seemed dreamlike, and the oppressive feeling of menace that had been building up in Holt’s mind took Eugene White for its focus, an absurdity he’d rid himself of as soon as he was close enough to see Eugene’s worried and honorable and familiar face.

  But it was back now, the feeling of oppression and heaviness, exacerbated by the filmed interview and this sterile corridor along which they obediently trooped in pairs, following Eugene. Eugene was State, not Defense; what was he doing in the Pentagon?

  Eugene, at the head of the column, now opened a door, no different from any of the doors they’d been passing, and they all filed inside. And at once Holt’s sense of unreality disappeared. The room was perfectly ordinary, despite its lack of windows. A long oval conference table dominated the space, surrounded by a dozen chairs with Naugahyde seats and backs and wooden arms, the whole enclosed by a cream-colored acoustical ceiling, simple plain light-green walls and green wall-to-wall carpeting. Through that wooden door on the right would be the lavatory.

  There were pencils and notepads and ashtrays on the table. Habitually placed, Holt supposed, doubting that Eugene would have thought it necessary to ask for pencils and notepads. Not for this meeting. None of them would have trouble remembering what was said in here today.

  Besides himself and Eugene and Robert and George, the six as-yet-unaware members of the group were Bradford’s brothers, Sterling and Harrison, his sons, Wellington and Bradford, Jr., his nephew and editor, Howard, and his fairly remote in-law, Senator Meredith Fanshaw, included because they might be needing all the influence, all the clout, they could muster. Up to this point, they were keeping their promise to Evelyn; it was still in the family.

  Eugene sat at the head of the table, with Holt to his immediate left and Robert Pratt to his right. He looked around, waiting for everyone to get settled, and then said, “I think Robert would be the best one to describe the situation. He’s been the closest to it, of anyone here.”

  Holt looked across at Robert, and saw the discomfort in the young man’s face. Which was understandable; Robert was unknown to several people in this room, not a member of the family at all, and the announcement he had to make was going to be a shocker. Still, Eugene was right; Robert was the best qualified to make the announcement.

  Which he did as bluntly as possible: “At this moment, Bradford is making plans to defect to Communist China.”

  Holt, looking at them, saw nothing but frowning disbelief, but no one responded for a few seconds, until BJ—Bradford, Jr., the only man present in a military uniform—suddenly blurted, “That’s a lie!”

  “It’s true,” Eugene said quietly.

  BJ sprang to his feet. “It’s a damn lie! Who is this man anyway, I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

  Softly, Sterling said, “He works for me, BJ. He’s a teacher at the university.”

  “Then what’s he going round telling lies for?”

  “I think we ought to listen to him,” Sterling said, “and make up our minds when he’s done.”

  BJ frowned. “I’ll listen,” he said ominously. He sat down again, tensely, on the edge of the chair. “But I know right now it’s lies and foolishness.”

  “I wish it was,” Robert Pratt said, and told them of Evelyn coming to see him a week ago, and why it was him she’d chosen to talk to, and what she’d said, and of his own conversation with Bradford.

  When he was finished Harrison said, “Gene, do you have any corroboration for this? Or is it just Evelyn? I’m not saying anything against the girl, but it’s well-known there are kinds of hysteria that strike—”

  Robert said, “I talked with Bradford myself.”

  “Excuse me,” Harrison said, “but I don’t know you. It could be your motives are the best in the world, but I don’t personally—”

  Eugene said, “Harrison, the film we saw is corroboration.”

  Holt said, “And from what Evelyn told us, Bradford’s treatment of you last summer was also corroboration. Didn’t he have some wild scheme about a pipeline?”

  “He was just making me sweat,” Harrison said. “That was never serious. And Evelyn shouldn’t be telling my business, that was no concern—”

  Holt said, “Herbert thought it was serious.”

  Harrison looked at him, startled, and said, “That’s private business. That’s nothing to bring up here.”

  “I think it is,” Holt said, and told the table at large, “Herbert Jarvis killed himself because Bradford wouldn’t come up—”

  “He did no such thing!” Harrison was on his feet, wild-eyed. “Just what do you think you’re doing, Joe?”

  “I think I’m taking a serious problem seriously, Harrison. I think we can’t afford self-protective lies at this point. And Bradford was serious about a visionary impractical scheme to build a city in a desert, with a four-hundred-mile pipeline to bring in water. He was serious about it and wouldn’t think of any other possibility until after Herbert killed himself.”

  “You read Herbert’s death certificate,” Harrison shouted. “God damn it, you can’t go shooting
off—”

  “I wrote Herbert’s death certificate,” Holt reminded him. “I lied on it, to cover up. And now there’s something else to be covered up, and you’re just wasting everybody’s time.”

  Sterling said, gently, “Relax, Harrison. We’re all family here, nobody’s going to run to the papers with the truth about Herbert.”

  “There was no need for him to bring it up,” Harrison said angrily, gesturing at Holt. He was still standing, leaning one hand forward on the table.

  “I only brought it up,” Holt said, “because you wouldn’t acknowledge that Bradford was serious about the pipeline.”

  “All right, he was.” Harrison spread his hands, as though to demonstrate the unimportance of the admission. “What does that prove? Nothing. What does it have to do with Communist China? Nothing.” He sat down.

  “An impractical unrealistic plan for the betterment of mankind,” Holt said. “He worked one out for you, and now he’s worked one out for himself.”

  Howard said, “That’s The Final Glory, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” George said. “I asked Evelyn about that, and she said he told her so specifically.”

  Meredith Fanshaw had his note-bespattered legal pad out in front of him, and now he said, frowning at his notes, “That’s the title he mentioned in the interview, isn’t it?”

  BJ said, in his parade-ground voice, “You’re all treating this as though it was real!”

  “It is real,” Holt told him.

  “It’s a joke,” BJ said, with total assurance. “I guarantee you, it’s a joke. He was pulling Evelyn’s leg. My father wouldn’t give aid and comfort to the enemies of this country, not for a second.”

  “He would,” Eugene said, “if he thought he was helping world peace in the process.”

  “He wouldn’t think such a thing,” BJ insisted. “He’s not a crazy man, he knows what can work and what can’t.”

  “Like the pipeline?” Holt asked.

  George said, “How about that interview? Does that sound like a smart politician?”

  “There’s another explanation,” BJ said, loud and sure. “My father wouldn’t even consider these things, any of these things. There’s another explanation. Why, he’d have to be out of his mind before he’d—” He faltered, and stopped, and a look of uncertainty, painful and frightening, crossed his face. Then he shook his head violently and said, “No. My father’s too strong a man for that.”

  Holt said to him, “Strong? What do you mean, strong?”

  “I mean his mind is strong, God damn it, he’s too strong-minded for anything like this.”

  “Nobody is too strong-minded for a mental breakdown,” Holt told him. “It just isn’t medically possible. Any brain, any brain, can malfunction.”

  “Not my father,” BJ said stubbornly.

  “Then he isn’t human,” Holt told him, impatient with BJ’s childishness. “He isn’t human, he’s God, and there’s nothing more to be said.”

  Sterling said, “Joe, have you examined him? Do you have any medical reason to believe it’s mental?”

  “I haven’t given him a thorough examination since before he went to France, back in June. I intend to examine him as soon as I can do so without alerting him as to what I’m up to. The fact of the matter is, I do have medical reasons to suspect a malfunction of the brain.” And he went on to describe Bradford’s recent medical history, the little strokes and the potential for a major stroke.

  Harrison said, suddenly, “Are you talking about that faint he had when he was out in California last winter?”

  “That was the first of the small-scale attacks, yes. The first we know about.”

  “That was nothing more than a faint,” Harrison said. “Because of the sun, he wasn’t used to it.”

  Holt said, “Did you have a doctor look at him?”

  “No, why should we? It was a faint.”

  “I looked at him when he got back,” Holt said. “I hate to pull rank on you, Harrison, but the reason they gave me a medical degree was because I had the schooling. What happened to Bradford in California was what we call a transient ischemic attack. A little stroke.”

  Eugene said, “I think we ought to let the diagnosis go until after Joe’s had a chance to examine Bradford again. Right now, I think we ought to just face the facts and decide what we want to do about them.”

  “Well, we want to stop him from going,” Fanshaw said. “That’s obvious.”

  Eugene said, “Is it? You mean lock him up?”

  “I mean stop him going. You don’t want to let him go, do you?”

  “No,” Eugene said. “But stopping him might not be that simple.”

  Harrison said, “Why not? Meredith said it, didn’t he? Stop him from going, that’s all.”

  Eugene turned to him and said, “How?”

  “How?” Harrison was getting agitated again. “What do you mean, how? Stop him, that’s how! There’s how many of us—ten? Nine of you. If you wanted to stop me from going out that door, you’d do it, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t ask how, would you? Nine of you and one of me, you’d stop me!”

  Howard, at the far end of the table, said drily, “Is that what you suggest we do, Harrison? Lock ourselves into a room with Brad the rest of our lives and keep him from getting to the door?”

  “That’s supposed to be funny, I suppose,” Harrison said. “You know damn well that isn’t what I mean.”

  “Then what do you mean?” Holt demanded. He didn’t have much use for Harrison at the best of times, and right now was finding him impossible.

  “How do I know?” Harrison shouted. “Can’t ten grown men figure out a way to stop one man from leaving the country?”

  Eugene said, very quietly, “That’s what we wanted to do, Harrison. That’s why I raised the question.”

  “Well, let’s work out the answer, then!” Harrison said.

  Holt and Eugene exchanged looks, while Howard said, “Why, thank you, Harrison. What a good idea.”

  “I suppose that’s funny, too. You have a strange idea of when to be humorous.”

  Sterling said, “The problem, of course, is that we don’t want this made public.”

  Fanshaw said, “Why not?” and Holt looked at him in surprise. It was true that Fanshaw was the only elective officeholder present, and the elective officeholder lives or dies on publicity, but did he really think there was hay to be made out of this situation? Or did he simply fail to understand what public disclosure would do to Bradford’s career, to the way he was remembered in the history books?

  Apparently, it was the latter, because he looked attentive and thoughtful as Sterling explained, saying, “In the first place, a man’s reputation is always based on what he did most recently. Bradford’s career is finished, his place in American history is assured, he will be remembered as one of the most important half-dozen twentieth-century American Presidents, because President is what he was last. I suppose you know the history of Benedict Arnold, who did great things for this nation, none of which are remembered. It was his final act, the betrayal, that determined what his whole career would mean.”

  “So if this got out,” Fanshaw said, “you think history would remember Bradford not as a President but as a traitor?”

  “No. I have no doubt we’ll succeed in keeping Brad from going over to the Chinese. But if the story gets out, what Brad will be remembered as is a madman. The Middle Ages saw several monarchs who were perfectly normal and adequate through most of their lives, but who went insane for one reason or another toward the end, and they’re all remembered only for the insanity. George the Third, for instance, known as Crazy George.”

  Fanshaw nodded. “All right. For his own good, we have to keep this quiet, I can see that. We don’t want to tarnish his name at the very end.”

  “That’s right,” Sterling said.

  Holt said, “I think it has to be even more restricted than that. I think we have to keep this within the family. Not only no public discl
osure, but no official disclosure even within the government.”

  Fanshaw said, “That I don’t understand at all. Surely we’ll need the government’s help.”

  Holt turned to the silent man sitting opposite him. “Wellington,” he said, “what would the government do?”

  Wellington looked sour. Holt knew how he hated to have attention drawn to himself, and in fact he didn’t believe Wellington had said a word since they’d all entered the room. But now he said, slowly, “I’m not sure. They might agree to secrecy.”

  “It wouldn’t be their primary concern,” Holt prompted.

  Wellington had a nature violently opposed to committing itself. “That would be hard to say,” he said cautiously.

  Eugene said, “Wellington, do you agree that we ought to keep this within the family?”

  Holt glanced at Eugene in gratitude. That was the question he’d been trying to formulate himself, but it hadn’t occurred to him to state it so directly.

  Wellington was like a mole dragged into sunlight, constantly turning away, trying to crawl back into his burrow. He now reluctantly faced this new tormentor and said, “That would depend.”

  Eugene wouldn’t let him go. “Depend on what?”

  “On whether or not it was feasible.”

  Holt grew suddenly impatient. “Explain yourself, Wellington,” he said. “For God’s sake, this isn’t a Congressional committee, we’re all friends here.”

  Wellington met Holt’s eyes—his own seemed blurred, hard to focus on—and said, “Are we? Very well. If the family could handle this, it would be better. If the family couldn’t, we’d have to bring in . . . others.”

  “You mean lock him up.”

  “That might still be done discreetly,” Wellington said.

  “Ex-Presidents aren’t that invisible,” Howard said. “I would imagine Brad averages one call a week from the media, a reporter, somebody, wanting a statement on whatever’s news.”

  Eugene said, “The point is, our first consideration would be Bradford. An official body, any official body, would naturally and properly have as its first consideration the national security.”