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 disclosure, 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.”
Wellington said, “Wouldn’t we all? In the last analysis, wouldn’t we all?”
Holt said, “What do you mean?”
Those blurred eyes turned to him again. “Hypothetical instance,” Wellington said. “You have a gun in your hand. Bradford is across the way, getting aboard a plane to take him to Peking. Would you shoot, or would you let him go?”
“I’d let him go,” Holt said promptly, and was surprised to see surprise in Wellington’s eyes. What sort of values did the man have?
Howard apparently wondered the same, because he said, “Of course we’d let him go. Wellington. Wellington, wouldn’t you?”
It seemed to Holt that Wellington’s head turned the way a tank’s gun turret swivels, and he could no longer remember why Wellington had always seemed so bland and dull in the past. Wellington said, “I’m not sure. To kill a great American? I would be reviled and vilified, of course, but would Brad? Having been stopped before he could do anything to smear his own record? He’d be given a hero’s burial, wouldn’t he? You people want to keep him from shame. I am his son, I would be willing to take his shame on my own shoulders.”
“We’re not talking about killing,” Sterling said, although they were. “We’re talking about saving Brad from himself.”
There was a small silence after that, and Holt knew it wasn’t because of what Sterling had said, but because of what Wellington had said before that. He couldn’t take his own eyes off Wellington, and he sensed that Howard and Eugene and George and Meredith Fanshaw were all gazing at him, too. Not staring, and not even shocked, really. Just gazing, studying, listening to Wellington’s words, listening to what words can do to facts. Two minutes ago, the thought of killing Bradford Lockridge — killing Bradford Lockridge! — was inconceivable, it was an enormity the mind instinctively shrank from. Now words had been said, tentatively, reluctantly, without passion, and something had happened to the sharp edges of revulsion. The concept of murder was suddenly blurred and hard to see clearly, like Wellington’s eyes.