Holt said, “We’ll want Robert at the meeting, Evelyn. You trust him, don’t you?”
She turned her head to look at Robert, sitting beside her, and her expression softened. “Yes,” she said.
Robert reached over and rested his hand on her’s on the chair arm. “We’re all going to be on Bradford’s side,” he said. “You don’t have to worry.”
“That’s right, Evelyn,” Holt said.
She looked over at Holt again, and he was surprised at the cold strength he now saw in her eyes. “Is it?” she said. “I know I’m on Bradford’s side. I know I don’t want him to defect to China because that would be terrible for him, terrible in every possible way. Terrible for him. A lot of the rest of you are going to be worried about the national reputation, or your own future as relatives of a President who defected, or other things that aren’t really Bradford. But I just want you to know that anything you do, you’re going to have to go through me, and I’m on Bradford’s side.”
Holt suddenly smiled, delighted with the girl. “All right, Evelyn,” he said. “That’s good.”
iii
Holt sat and watched Bradford’s face, magnified in close-up on the screen in front of them in the darkness, and listened to Bradford’s amplified voice, and never got over his surprise at how rational it all sounded.
There was a faint distraction; sitting on his left, Meredith Fanshaw, junior Senator from Missouri, was taking notes, ballpoint pen on yellow legal pad. Taking notes? To Holt’s right, Sterling Lockridge simply sat and thoughtfully gazed at the film of his brother’s interview unreeling in front of them. In the row ahead, Holt’s nephew George fidgeted slightly whenever his own voice sounded to ask a question, so it was probably just as well there was no picture of George, the camera remaining focused for the full ninety minutes in medium close-up on Bradford’s face.
The film ended, the screen blared a sudden crackling white, and then there was soft darkness for a few seconds before the regular lights came on. The nine men in the small screening room cleared their throats and shuffled their feet and moved their heads around, but none of them looked at one another, and no one spoke. The feeling of discomfort and embarrassment was palpable, and Holt felt it as strongly as the rest.
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.”