Fairlie tried to sit up but it seemed to require too much effort. He sagged back against the wall and held the speech up, squinting at it. Cesar moved the microphone closer.
“When should I start?”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Fairlie’s eyes wandered over the sheet. “What’s this about Dexter Ethridge—and this about Milton Luke?”
“It’s all true. They’re dead.”
“My God,” Fairlie whispered.
The shock of that seemed to bring him around. He sat up again and maintained the position this time. “They’re dead? How?”
“Ethridge seems to have died of natural causes,” Sturka lied. “Luke was killed by a bomb which blew up his limousine. Please don’t ask me who did it. I don’t know. As you can see it was none of us—we’re here, we’re not in Washington.”
“My God,” Fairlie muttered again. “Has it started then?”
“The revolution? If it hasn’t it’s about to.”
“What time is it? What day?”
“Tuesday. The eighteenth of January. It’s early morning. Who knows, if you cooperate promptly enough you may be home in time to be inaugurated. Or perhaps you’d rather just sleep a while. But you have to read this first.”
Fairlie was trying to grapple with it but he was too far under, too drowned by the resistance-destroying weight of the drugs. He picked up the yellow sheet and began to read in a listless monotone, eyelids drooping, voice wandering into whispers every once in a while:
“This—this is Clifford Fairlie speaking. I am very tired and under the influence of mild tranquilizers, which have been administered to me to insure that I don’t do any reckless things that might—uh—jeopardize my physical safety. That will explain the … sleepy sound of my voice. But I am in good health.
“Uh—I have been informed of … deaths of Vice-President-elect Dexter Ethridge and Speaker Luke, for which I am allowed to express … deepest personal anguish.
“The seven … political prisoners from Washington have been delivered to Geneva as instructed, and my captors have asked me to announce their further instructions now. The seven … prisoners are to be transported by air to Algiers. They are then to be transported to the town of El Dzam—El Djamila, where an automobile is to be provided for their use. They are to be told to drive south along the highway toward El Goléa until they are contacted.
“If any survillance—surveillance is detected, I am told I will not be released. Neither the Algerian Government nor any other government is to follow the prisoners or make any other effort to determine their whereabouts. The prisoners will be provided by my captors with fresh transportation out of Algeria, but before they are sent on they will be stripped and examined by X ray to insure that no electronic devices have been concealed in their clothes or on their bodies.
“If all conditions are met precisely, the seven prisoners will have forty-eight hours in which to disappear into asylum in a country that has not been identified to me.
“If there is no indication of betrayal on the part of the United States or any other government, I will be released twenty-four hours after the release of the seven prisoners.
“There is one final instruction. The seven prisoners are to be in their car leaving El Djamila at precisely six o’clock in the evening—that is eighteen hours by the European clock—on Thursday the twentieth of January. And I am told to repeat that any attempt to follow the prisoners’ car or to track it electronically will be detected and will result in my … death.”
7:45 A.M. EST “… defies the whole purpose of the Constitution,” Senator Fitzroy Grant said.
Satterthwaite was thinking of Woodrow Wilson’s phrase to describe the Senate: little group of willful men.… He said, “That has a high moral tone, but would you still say the same thing if Howard Brewster happened to be a Republican?”
“Yes.” The Senate Minority Leader almost snapped it.
“Even though the alternative is Hollander?”
“You’re thinking in terms of immediate expediency, Bill. You always do. I’m thinking of the long haul. I don’t think we can jeopardize the whole meaning of the Constitution for the sake of a temporary crisis.”
“It won’t be temporary if Hollander gets to spend four years in the White House. It may be the most permanent thing that’s ever happened to this country. If you agree annihilation can be regarded as permanent.”
“Let’s leave out the sarcasms, shall we?” Grant’s voice beat rolling echoes around his office. Past Grant’s head through the window Satterthwaite could see the shell of the Capitol with snow on it. The building didn’t look much different on the outside from before the bombings. A few construction trailers drawn up against the East Portico, a larger number of guards than there had been a month ago. A bit of absurdity in that, since nobody was inside it except workmen.
Fitzroy Grant’s dewlappy face turned slightly and picked up some light from the window; his eyes looked sad. He ran a hand carefully over the neat wave in his white hair. “Look Bill, the majority will vote with you anyway. My vote won’t matter.”
“Then why not throw in with us?”
The deep slow velvet voice was only faintly ironic. “Call it principle if you like. I realize the truth can’t prevail against a false idea whose time has come. But I have to follow my own inclinations.”
“Can I ask at least for an abstention?”
“No. I’m going to vote against.”
“Even if you turn out to be the swing vote?”
“I’m not that low in the alphabet.”
“I’m backpedaling, you can see that. I’m not used to this kind of horsetrading. But it does seem to me there ought to be somewhere where we could meet on common ground. Some kind of compromise.”
Grant seemed to smile. “You’re not half bad at it, Bill. Don’t run yourself down as a politician.”
“Well I sure don’t seem to be getting anywhere with you.”
“Howard Brewster’s pushing too hard, Bill. Love me love my ideas. He’s put himself on the line—everything he’s ever been, everything he’s got. One throw of the dice. All right, I realize he’s feeling the heat. I don’t like Hollander either. But this arrogance from the White House—that’s what I can’t stand. Frankly I believe we can handle Hollander. Hamstring him. There are ways, if only Congress will show the gumption. Hollander’s less of a threat than Howard Brewster, to my mind—because if Brewster puts this over on the country it’ll be one more nail in the coffin of the republic. The Roman Caesars came to power by stealing it away from the Senate. Brewster’s trying to get Congress to reinstate him in an office he just got through losing in a popular election. It smacks of coup d’état to me. I’m afraid I simply haven’t got the conscience to back this move. That’s all there is to it.”
“Fitz, you talked to the President yesterday, and——”
“Let’s say the President talked to me.”
“——and you told him you couldn’t support him. But you agreed to keep the secret until he opened it up. Why?”
“My peculiar brand of personal loyalty I suppose. He made it personal. We’ve been friends for thirty years.”
“Then may I prevail on that friendship for at least this much—that you agree not to campaign actively against the President’s move?”
“By actively you mean publicly.”
“No. I mean privately as well. While the committee is getting ready to report out the bill will you agree not to perform any of that quiet arm-twisting you’re so famous for?”
Fitzroy Grant chuckled amiably. “Funny, I always thought it was Howard Brewster who was famous for that. What do you think you’re doing right now if not a little genteel arm-twisting?”
“I’d appreciate an answer.”
“Very well, I’ll give you one. But it requires a bit of a preamble. With me they always do.”
Satterthwaite thought of looking at his watch, thought better of it, waited. He was thinking of the hard-backed chairs over in the Executive Office Building that would be filled in an hour’s time by the rumps of two dozen congressional leaders, among whose number the President hoped Fitzroy Grant yet might appear.