Lyman leaned on the desk, supporting his chin in both hands.
"Forget the details for a minute, Chris. What do you think of the over-all probability? Do you think the mood of the country and the climate of military opinion make such an operation, let's say, a possibility?"
"No, I don't." Todd studied the stump of his cigar before dropping it into the big desk ashtray. "But obviously, Mr. President, I realize we must do everything possible to ascertain the facts-and quickly. We'd be guilty of gross negligence if we didn't."
Todd unsnapped his briefcase and took out a long yellow scratch pad. He jotted down a series of numbers with his pen. Opposite the first he wrote: "ECOMCON."
"Let's just run through it all again," he said. "I'll study the list this noon and try to come up with a workable plan of investigation by this afternoon. I must say, though, Mr. President, you don't have many investigators available."
"Try to change places with me in your mind, Chris," Lyman said, "and then run through a list of a thousand friends and associates, and see how many you think you can trust completely. You'll be surprised how few you come up with."
"Especially," said Todd acidly, again arching his gray eyebrows, "if you weed out all those who you think might laugh at you when the monster vanishes out of the bedtime story."
"My, my," said Lyman. "You're not only a good big-city lawyer but a pretty fair country psychologist too."
They enumerated events and circumstances, item by item, until Todd had filled a page and a half with numbered notes.
"A couple of things in here lead me to believe that your Colonel Casey has a vivid imagination," Todd said. "For example, take Fred Prentice's remark about staying 'alert' on Saturday. What earthly excuse is there for linking that to the All Red? 'Alert' is a word that anyone might use."
"I guess you might be right there, Chris. I suppose that once Casey got suspicious every casual remark took on some significance it might not really have. But I think you have to look at it along with everything else."
"Well, I'd better get back to my office," Todd said, sliding the pad back into the case and snapping the catch, "and try to make some sense out of this jumble."
Todd left, carrying his portfolio like a professor on his way to class. Through the door Lyman watched him bowing slightly to Esther as he passed her desk. Then she looked at the President and he beckoned to her.
"Esther," he said, "call Colonel Casey and tell him about the meeting. You don't need to explain. But tell him to use the east entrance again."
Well, Lyman thought, in all of my little band of brothers, only two of us can see the forest for the trees ... if there is a forest. Only Ray Clark and I can see the big question. There can't be a constitutional struggle unless the atmosphere is right, unless people are really worried deep down in their bellies. Are they? ... Good old Chris. He's intrigued by the idea of a conspiracy. You can tell it from his eyes, even if he won't admit it. But it's all a matter of evidence, of witnesses, with him... . Corwin can't think of anything but the person of the President. Paul sees it as a simple power struggle between Scott and myself.
Casey? He's just an officer, doing his duty as he sees it.
They're all on the side of the angels, the President mused, and I couldn't ask for better people. But I can't make them understand why it's important. They all think it is, each for his own reasons, but those reasons aren't good enough. I've got to try to make them see it my way, and only Clark sees it that way now ... but does he? Is he worried about the country? He thinks he is, but I don't know. I don't know if you really can worry about it, no matter who you are and how much you think, unless you sit in this chair here. Alone. Sometimes I think no one except the President ever thinks of the country, all of it. I wonder if anyone else can, when you get down to it?
Lyman turned to look out the long windows that stretched from ceiling to floor. The heavy May rain continued to beat down on the hedges, the rose bushes, the rhododendrons, and the big shiny leaves of the magnolia tree. A guard, his head pulled into the turned-up collar of a black rubber raincoat, sloshed along the curving driveway. The President stood watching, smoking, silently cursing the weather-and the myopia of men.
In the pressroom, reporters and photographers were playing wild poker, dealer's choice. Quarters and half dollars clinked noisily on the table. Three telephones were ringing. Milky Waters had his feet on his desk as he talked with Hugh Ulanski of United Press International.
The noncommittal tone Waters used with politicians and other news sources was not in evidence now. As dean of the White House press corps, he spoke with authority among his peers.
"I can't figure the guy," he said. "The day after a national poll comes out showing him up to his ass in unpopularity, he schedules only one appointment- and cancels that one."
"Maybe he's a secret nudist," suggested Ulanski, "and he's contemplating his navel."
"You got the wrong religion for navel watching, son, but the right idea. I like the guy, but if he's a politician I'm a sword swallower."
Simon came into the pressroom. Waters left his feet up but reached for a notebook. The poker game paused expectantly.
"It's nothing much," the press secretary said, fingering his dark-rimmed glasses. "I was asked what 'legislative matters' the President is working on this morning. I haven't got to him yet, but I'll have it for you at the afternoon briefing."
"Frank, you've given me an idea for my overnight." It was Ulanski. "Instead of my day lead, which said the President did nothing, I'll say the President is worn out from doing nothing, and has been ordered to rest tomorrow."
Simon didn't bother to reply. He left. The poker game resumed. The rain continued.
Jiggs Casey's morning in the caverns of the Pentagon was as gloomy as the weather outside. A rising torrent of conflicting conjectures had been flooding his mind from the moment he got out of bed. The ashtray on his desk had doubled its normal accumulation of cigarette stubs, and he had decided that his career as a Marine was finished.
What crazy impulse had sent him to the White House with that nightmare story? How could he have thought of implicating a man of Scott's stature in a plot that had no basis except a frayed string of coincidences? And he had betrayed his own service. Marines don't do that. The feeling of disloyalty to his own kind put Casey in an ugly humor. Every time he tried to think concisely about the episodes that had made such an impression on him yesterday his emotions pulled him back to his own plight. Probably by this time the President had called for his service record and ordered Girard to look for a history of psychiatric trouble. Thank God, at least there's nothing like that in it. Or maybe Lyman had just called General Scott direct and told him the director of the Joint Staff needed a mental examination.
The last possibility was still in Casey's mind when, shortly after ten o'clock, he was summoned to Scott's office. Well, here it comes, he thought as he walked down the hall. Add one Marine to the retired list.
Scott's greeting was friendly as he motioned Casey to a chair. In addition to the usual buoyancy, Casey thought he noted an almost jovial air.
"Jiggs," the General said, "you've been working too hard on the alert. I want you to take the rest of the week off. Why don't you and Marge duck down to White Sulphur and blow yourselves to a good time?"
Casey had expected almost anything but this. He shook his head.
"I couldn't do that, sir," he said. "There are a lot of little details on the All Red, General. I just wouldn't feel right."