"Please keep it in confidence, Barney. Invent some other excuse. I mean I'd rather it wasn't known that you're coming to see me."
"No trouble at all, Mr. President. I always have business in Washington. In fact, I planned to come next week anyway. Shall I call you when I get in?"
"Please. Just ask for Miss Townsend. She'll find me."
Corwin was spluttering with laughter when Lyman returned to the solarium. Casey was wiping his eyes and even Todd wore a smile. Clark had been entertaining.
"And speaking of doctors," he said-Lyman was sure that Clark had been regaling the company with maternity-ward humor-"reminds me of Ol' Doc, who ran against me in a primary one time. He used to collect his campaign funds on the spot, after he worked the crowds up with a good long speech. He'd stand there, all pink and sweaty with beer and righteousness, and call out the denomination of the bills as they handed 'em to him. 'Ten more for the campaign pot,' like that. Well, one time a fat-cat auto dealer down in south Georgia passed him a fifty-dollar bill. 01' Doc, he looked at it, and looked at it again, and damn near fainted-and then stuffed it into his pocket and sung out loud and clear, 'Ten more for the campaign pot!' "
They all congratulated Lyman. Clark said it ought to add at least five points to his next poll rating. Girard proposed a toast, nodding toward the portable bar, but the President shook his head. His mind was already back on business.
"Barney's flying in here tonight," he said. "I'll send him over to see Palmer. But, Chris, I want some thought given to the way Barney should be handled. It has to be just right."
Todd nodded and scribbled a note on the top of his pad. Then he ran his pen down his list again.
"The first thing to straighten out," he said, "is this ECOMCON business. Do we have any solid evidence at all that it exists, aside from Colonel Casey's talk with Henderson and the Hardesty note? I gather we don't."
Lyman nodded at Girard. "Paul, give us that list of classified bases you got this morning."
Girard read off a list of seventeen installations. All but five were outside the continental limits. Two of those five, Mount Thunder and a special area at Camp Ritchie in Maryland, were underground retreats for top government officials in case of a nuclear war. The other three were the sites of vaults where nuclear warheads and components were stored. There was no base near El Paso, and none with the ECOMCON designation or a similar mission. Nor was any of the bases, at home or abroad, known to Fullerton by the "Site Y" designation.
"He said the only time that tag was used, so far as he knows, was for Los Alamos where they made the atomic bomb in 1945," Girard said.
"I could not have recited that list from memory," Lyman said, "but I know that each installation on it was specifically authorized by myself or one of my predecessors. Furthermore, on the day after my inauguration I was briefed on each classified base then in existence. I am positive there has never been any discussion of any installation of a secret nature near El Paso."
"That clarifies my point," said Todd. "There appears to be nothing in writing anywhere to indicate that this base does in fact exist. With all due respect to Colonel Casey, perhaps it does not."
"You mean the first order of business is to find out?" asked Lyman.
"Precisely," Todd replied. "But how? Of course, the normal procedure would be for you, Mr. President, to call General Scott and ask him. If he denied it, you would then order him to accompany you on an inspection trip to the El Paso area. If there were no base, you would fire Colonel Casey and apologize to Scott. If there were one, you would disperse the ECOMCON troops and dismiss Scott on a charge of insubordination."
The five men looked at the President. Lyman smiled patiently at Todd.
"Are you seriously suggesting that course of action, Chris?" he asked.
"No," Todd said, "I am merely saying that would be the normal way for a President to act, under normal circumstances."
Girard moved in. "Look, Mr. Secretary. If there turned out to be no base, the story would be plastered all over every paper in the country. The boss would look like a complete fool, and the administration wouldn't be worth the baling wire it would take to hold it together. That's not politics, Mr. Secretary. It's lunacy."
"But of course we assume the base does exist, or we wouldn't be here." Todd's temper was rising.
"Look at the other side, Chris," said Lyman. "Let's say we find the base and I demand Scott's resignation. I suppose his reply would be that I had authorized the base orally. We'd set up a fight in Congress and the newspapers that could literally tear the country in half."
"Christ, yes," added Girard acidly. "The House would vote a bill of impeachment within a week, with the mood the country's in. They'd say the boss was out of his mind. And much as I love him, you put his word against Scott's right now and I wouldn't bet a dime on our man."
"Thanks, Paul," said Lyman. His voice was sarcastic, but his smile was tolerant-and agreeing.
"Wait a minute, all of you," Todd said. "I'm not advocating this. It's just that my instinct always is to sail the shortest course for the harbor in a squall."
"That's why you're the Secretary of the Treasury, by appointment, instead of being a senator or governor by election, Chris." Lyman spoke slowly, in schoolmaster fashion, as men do to friends outside their trade. "We're really at the heart of the matter here, aside from Scott's character itself, and it's a political judgment: Is this thing possible-really? I've spent most of the last twenty-four hours thinking about that."
The President got up from his chair in his gawky way and walked halfway around the room to lean against the center window sill. He crossed his feet as though trying to hide their size and fussed with his pipe for a minute.
"Actually," he said, "Jiggs's visit last night brought into focus a lot of things that have troubled me since I took over this job. I hope you can stand a little philosophy; I think it goes to the guts of this thing.
"Ever since that first atomic explosion at Hiroshima, something has been happening to man's spirit. It's not surprising, really. Up until then a man could have some feeling that even in a terrible war he had some control over his existence. Not much, maybe, but still some. The bomb finished that. Everybody's first thought was that it would end war. Everybody's second thought was that if it didn't, he was at the mercy of the people who had the bombs. Then came the hydrogen bombs and now these awful neutron weapons.
"Civilization can go with a moan and a whimper overnight. Everybody knows it. But how can an individual feel anything but helpless? He can't grab a rifle and rush out to defend his country. He probably can't even help much by joining the Navy and serving on a missile submarine. He'd know that if he ever got an order to fire, it would mean that his home was probably already a pile of ashes-or would be in fifteen minutes."
The room was still. Todd, sunk in his chair, had let his pad slip to the floor. Corwin sat straight against the door. Casey noiselessly stubbed out a cigarette and clasped his hands behind his thick neck.
"None of that means much to the dictatorships," Lyman went on. "In a monolithic state-and that's what Russia has been for centuries, under czars and commissars both-people never get used to influencing their government, and they don't miss it. But a democracy is different. Each of us has got to feel that we can influence events, no matter how slight the influence. When people start believing they can't they get frustrated, and angry. They feel helpless and they start going to extremes. Look at the history-Joe McCarthy, then the Birch society, now the popularity of this fanatic MacPherson."
Lyman paused and looked at his companions. Todd took the cue.
"Granting all that, Mr. President," he said, "you'll recall that when General Walker-remember, that division commander in Germany-got out of line in 1961, President Kennedy wasted no time relieving him."