He took his seat behind the great desk under the green-tinted windows of five-inch bulletproof glass that give onto the Rose Garden, and leaned back in the high swivel chair. It had been seventy-three days since he had last taken this seat.
On his desk was a silver-framed photograph. It showed Simon, a picture taken at Yale in the fall before he left for England. He was twenty then, his young face full of vitality and zest for life and great expectations.
The President took the picture in both hands and gazed at it a long time. Finally he opened a drawer on his left.
“Goodbye, son,” he said.
He placed the photograph facedown in the drawer, closed it, and depressed a switch on his intercom.
“Send Craig Lipton in to see me, please.”
When his Press Secretary arrived, the President told him he wanted one hour of prime-time television on the major channels the following evening for an address to the nation.
The landlady of the rooming house in Alexandria was sorry to lose her Canadian guest, Mr. Roger Lefevre. He was so quiet and well-behaved; no trouble at all. Not like some she could mention.
The evening he came down to settle his account and say goodbye she noticed he had shaved off his beard. She approved; it made him look much younger.
The television in her living room was on, as always. The tall man stood in the door to make his farewell. On the screen a serious-faced anchorman announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”
“Are you sure you can’t stay a little longer?” asked the landlady. “The President’s going to speak. They say the poor man’s bound to resign.”
“My cab’s at the door,” said Quinn. “I have to go.”
On the screen the face of President Cormack flashed up. He was sitting foursquare behind his desk in the Oval Office, beneath the Great Seal. He had scarcely been seen for eighty days, and viewers knew he looked older, more drawn, more lined than three months earlier. But that beaten look in the photograph that had been flashed around the world, his face as he stood beside the grave in Nantucket, was gone. He held himself erect and looked straight into the camera lens, establishing direct, if electronic, eye contact with more than 100 million Americans and many more millions around a world linked by satellite into the transmission. There was nothing weary or defeated about his posture; his voice was measured, grave but firm.
“My fellow Americans…” he began.
Quinn closed the front door and went down the steps to his cab.
“Dulles,” he said.
Along the sidewalks the lights were bright with Christmas decorations, the store Santas ho-ho-ho-ing as best they could with a transistor radio slapped to one ear. The driver headed southwest on the Henry Shirley Memorial Highway to take a right onto River Turnpike and another to the Capital Beltway.
After several minutes Quinn noticed an increasing number of drivers pulling over to the curb to concentrate on the broadcast coming over their car radios. On the sidewalks, groups began to form, clustered around a radio. The driver of the blue-and-white cab had a pair of earphones over his head. Just onto the turnpike he yelled, “Sheeee-yit, man, I don’t believe what I’m hearing.”
He turned his head around, ignoring the road.
“You want me to put this on the speaker?”
“I’ll catch the repeat later,” said Quinn.
“I could pull over, man.”
“Drive on,” said Quinn.
At Dulles International, Quinn paid off the cab and strode through the doors toward British Airways check-in. Across the concourse most of the passengers and half the staff were gathered around a TV set mounted on a wall. Quinn found one clerk behind the check-in desk.
“Flight Two-ten for London,” he said, and put down his ticket. The clerk dragged her eyes away from the TV set and studied the ticket, punching her desktop terminal to confirm the booking.
“You’re changing at London for Málaga?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
The voice of John Cormack came across the unusually silent hall.
“In order to destroy the Nantucket Treaty, these men believed they must first destroy me…”
The clerk issued his boarding pass, staring at the screen.
“I can go through to departure?” asked Quinn.
“Oh… yes, sure… have a nice day.”
Past immigration control there was a waiting area with a duty-free bar. Another television set was behind the bar. All the passengers were grouped together, staring at it.
“Because they could not get at me, they took my son, my only and much-loved son, and they killed him.”
In the mobile lounge rolling out to the waiting Boeing, in the red-white-and-blue livery of British Airways, there was a man with a transistor. No one spoke. At the entrance to the airplane Quinn offered his boarding pass to a steward, who gestured him toward first class. Quinn was allowing himself the luxury by using up the last of his Russian money. He heard the President’s voice coming from the mobile lounge behind him as he ducked his head into the cabin.
“That is what happened. Now it is over. But of this I give you my word. Fellow Americans, you have a President again…”
Quinn buckled himself into the window seat, declined a glass of champagne, and asked for red wine instead. He accepted a copy of the Washington Post and began to read. The aisle seat beside him remained empty at takeoff.
The 747 lifted off and turned her nose toward the Atlantic and Europe. All around Quinn there was an excited buzz as incredulous passengers discussed the presidential speech, which had lasted almost an hour. Quinn sat in silence and read his newspaper.
The lead article on the front page announced the broadcast the world had just heard, assuring readers that the President would use the occasion to inform the world of his departure from office.
“Is there anything else I can offer you, sir, anything at all?” drawled a honeyed voice in his ear.
He turned and grinned with relief. Sam stood in the aisle, leaning over him.
“Just you, baby.”
He folded the paper on his lap. On the back page was a story neither of them noticed. It said, in the strange code of headline writers: VIET VETS XMAS WINDFALL. The subhead amplified the code: PARAPLEGIC HOSPITAL GETS NO-NAME $5M.
Sam sat down in the aisle seat.
“Got your message, Mr. Quinn. And yes, I will come to Spain with you. And yes, I will marry you.”
“Good,” he said. “I hate indecision.”
“This place where you live… what’s it like?”
“Small place, little white houses, little old church, little old priest…”
“Just so long as he recalls the words of the marriage ceremony.”
She reached her arms behind his head and pulled it down to her own for a long lingering kiss. The newspaper slipped off his lap and fell to the floor, back page upward. A stewardess, smiling indulgently, retrieved it. She failed to notice, nor would she have cared if she had, the lead story on the page. It was headed:
PRIVATE FUNERAL FOR TREASURY SECRETARY
HUBERT REED:
CONTINUING MYSTERY OF LATE-NIGHT DRIVE
INTO POTOMAC.
About the Author
FREDERICK FORSYTH is the author of eight best-selling novels: The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, The Devil’s Alternative, The Fourth Protocol, The Negotiator, The Deceiver, and The Fist of God. He has also written an acclaimed collection of short fiction, No Comebacks, He lives outside London.
