The new President paused. He looked as if he wanted to light a smoke or take a drink. But this was the time and place for neither. He drew in a deep breath and went on: “Some will say we ought to be freer than we are. Maybe they’re right, but maybe they’re wrong. Maybe this is the way things have to be if we’re going to stay even so free. I don’t know the answer to that yet. I’ll be working on it, the same as Joe Steele was.”
Another pause. “The President we used to have is dead. I’m sorry as all get-out. I wish I wasn’t standing here in front of you making this speech right now. But even with Joe Steele gone, the United States of America is still in business. God bless America, and God bless each and every one of you.” He stepped away from the microphone.
By the graveside, Betty Steele gently wept. Most of Joe Steele’s cronies and Cabinet members, as well as the Senators and Representatives and Supreme Court justices who’d served under him for so long, also sobbed. Charlie sniffled a little himself. He couldn’t help it. Had he not been there when Joe Steele died, he might have thought they were all hypocrites shedding crocodile tears. He understood better now. Some losses simply were too big to take in. This was one of them. They could worry later about whether Joe Steele and all he’d done were good or bad. What mattered now was that the man was gone. His passing couldn’t help leaving a void inside everyone who remained.
Cemetery workers lowered the bronze casket into the ground. They took hold of shovels and began to fill in the grave. Dirt thudding down on the coffin lid was the most final sound Charlie knew. TV cameras brought the funeral to the whole country.
Dignitaries walked back to their Cadillacs and Lincolns and Imperials and Packards. Some men drove themselves away. Others let chauffeurs take care of the work. Armed GBI guards on motorcycles escorted the small convoy of expensive Detroit cars Charlie rode in: the one that went back to the White House. People filled the sidewalks, many with handkerchiefs pressed to their faces as they mourned. Nobody under thirty-five had any idea what the country’d been like before Joe Steele won his first national election in 1932.
John Nance Garner (President John Nance Garner-sure enough, that still had just begun to sink in) stood waiting by his limousine as Charlie came up to him along with Scriabin and Kagan and Mikoian. “Mr. President,” Charlie murmured. The other aides nodded, all of them in their somber mourning suits.
“Gentlemen,” Garner said. He suddenly seemed taller and straighter than Charlie remembered. Going from Number Two to Number One would do that, even if Garner hadn’t looked to be President. He went on, “Gentlemen, I would like to talk with all of you in the conference room in fifteen minutes.”
They all nodded again, though the look Kagan sent Scriabin said nobody but Joe Steele had any business ordering them around like that. Who did John Nance Garner think he was, the President or something? By the way he stood next to the Cadillac, that was just what he thought.
Charlie hadn’t been in the conference room since Joe Steele had his stroke there. He shivered when he walked in. The place still overwhelmingly reminded him of the dead President. The lingering aroma of Joe Steele’s pipe tobacco rammed the memory home-smell was tied in with emotion and evocation more than any of the other senses.
John Nance Garner was smoking a Camel, not a pipe. A drink sat on the table in front of him, but he didn’t pick it up. “Hello, Sullivan,” he said. “Who woulda figured it’d come to this?”
“I know I didn’t, sir.” Charlie glanced at the clock on the wall behind the new President. If Joe Steele’s California henchmen didn’t hustle, they’d be late.
They weren’t. They came in together, on time to the second. “Mr. President,” they chorused as they slid into their usual seats.
Garner slid sheets of paper across the table at them and at Charlie. “These are letters of resignation,” he said. “They’re for form. I’m getting them from the Cabinet, too.”
Charlie signed his and passed it back. If John Nance Garner wanted someone else putting words in his mouth, he was entitled to that. Charlie didn’t know just what he’d do if the new President let him go, but he expected he could come up with something. He might wind up poorer-no, he would wind up poorer-as a newspaperman, but he might be happier, too. He wondered if he remembered how to write a lead any more. Chances were it would come back to him.
The glances Mikoian, Scriabin, and Kagan sent him were all distinctly hooded. But they couldn’t very well refuse to sign letters like that. One by one, they scrawled their names. Kagan needed to borrow Scriabin’s pen so he could put his signature on the underscored line.
John Nance Garner set reading glasses on his nose and examined each letter in turn. He clucked his tongue between his teeth and sighed. Then he said, “Mikoian, Kagan, Scriabin-I’m going to accept your resignations, effective immediately. Sullivan, you can stick around a little longer, anyways.”
Joe Steele’s henchmen stared at him in disbelief too theatrical for any director to use. “You can’t do that!” the Hammer exclaimed.
“You don’t dare do that!” Kagan added.
“Oh, yes, I can, and I damn well do dare,” John Nance Garner replied.
“Why are you doing this?” Mikoian asked. Charlie also thought that was a pretty good question.
Garner answered it: “Why? I’ll tell you why. Because for the past twenty years you whistleass peckerheads have pretended I’d never been born, that’s why. That’s easy when you’re messing with the Veep. But I’m not the goddamn Veep any more. Now I call the shots, and I’ll keep the company I want to keep, same as Joe Steele did before me. Tell you what, though-I’ll make it easier on you, so it doesn’t look quite so much like I’m kicking you out the White House door.”
“How do you mean?” Scriabin demanded, hard suspicion curling his voice.
“Well, I was thinking I’d name Mikoian here ambassador to Afghanistan, and Kagan ambassador to Paraguay,” Garner said. “I don’t reckon I’ll have any trouble getting the Senate to confirm those.”
“What about me?” the Hammer asked.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, Vince. I got a place for you, too,” John Nance Garner replied. No one called Scriabin Vince, not even Joe Steele. No. No one had. Smiling, Garner continued, “I’ll put you up for ambassador to Outer Mongolia. Have fun with the camels and the sheep.”
“You won’t get away with this.” Scriabin would have sounded less frightening had he sounded less frigid.
“No, huh? People like you, they serve at the President’s pleasure. Well, the pleasure ain’t mine. Now get the hell out of the White House, before I call the hired muscle to throw you out.”
They stalked from the conference room, Mikoian serene as always, Kagan scowling, and Scriabin shaking his head in tightly held fury. That left Charlie alone with the new President. “What about me, sir?” he asked. But that wasn’t the question he wanted to ask. After a moment, he got it out: “Why didn’t you fire me, too?”
“Like I told you, you can hang around if you want to,” Garner said. “And here’s why-you remembered I was a human being even when Joe Steele didn’t. You’d drink with me. You’d talk with me. More’n Joe Steele or those three puffed-up thugs o’ his ever did. You know how I found out there was such a thing as an atom bomb?”
“How?” Charlie asked.
“When I heard on the radio we dropped one on that Sendai place, that’s how,” John Nance Garner growled. “Nobody said a word to me before. Not one goddamn word, Sullivan. I was Vice President of the United States, an’ they treated me like a dirty Red spy. Did you know about the bomb ahead of time?”
“Well. . some.” Charlie wondered whether Garner would show him the door for telling the truth.
“I ain’t surprised. I wish I was, but I ain’t.” The President lit another cigarette. “You wrote some pretty good words for Joe Steele. You might’ve done even better if he’d wanted you to, too. So we’ll see how it goes, if that suits you. If I don’t like it, I’ll toss you out on your ear.”