He sat down at his desk and purposely straightened his bare back so that it was flat, hard against the chair. He kept his muscles taut, his posture rigid. It was an exercise he used often to discipline himself. To gain control of excessive feelings.
He’d shown Alex one night; a rare evening when they’d fought. Over some silly thing that was inconsequential … the roommate, that was it. The dirty roommate from Alex’s old apartment on 21st Street. The dirty, filthy roommate who wanted Alex to drive him up to Baltimore because he had too much luggage for the train.
They’d fought that night. But Alex finally understood how the dirty, filthy roommate was taking advantage of him, and so he called him up and told him absolutely no. After the telephone call, Alex was still upset, so Rod—Roger—showed him his bedroom desk exercise, and Alex began to laugh. It was a happy laugh; Alex was actually giddy. He told Roger that his exercise in discipline was almost pure Hindu Kantamani, an ancient religious punishment for young boys the priests found masturbating.
Bruce pressed his naked back harder into the chair. He could feel the buttons of the blue-velvet upholstery cutting into his flesh. But it was working; he was thinking clearly now.
Bobby Webster had given him two photographs of Trevayne and De Spadante together in De Spadante’s hospital room in Greenwich. The first photograph depicted Trevayne seemingly explaining something to the bedridden gangster. The second showed Trevayne looking angry—«disgruntled» was perhaps more accurate—at something De Spadante had just said. Webster had told him to hold them for seventy-two hours. That was important. Three days. Bruce would understand.
Then the following afternoon Webster had called him all over town, trying to find him. The White House aide was in a panic—as much of a panic as he allowed himself. He demanded the photographs back, and before he even heard the agreeable reply, began threatening White House retaliation.
And Webster had sworn to impose executive isolation if one word about Trevayne’s visit to De Spadante was even hinted at in print.
Roderick Bruce relaxed his posture, let his back fall away from the chair. He recalled Webster’s exact words when he asked the White House aide if Trevayne or De Spadante or the photographs would have any bearing on Paul Bonner’s murder charge.
«None whatsoever. There’s no connection; that stands as is. We’re controlling that on all sides.»
But he hadn’t controlled it. He hadn’t even been able to manage the Army lawyer defending Bonner. A Pentagon lawyer!
Bobby Webster hadn’t lied; he’d lost his clout. He was helpless. He used strong threats, but he hadn’t the muscle to carry them out.
And if there was one thing Roger Brewster of Erie, Pennsylvania, had learned in the cosmopolitan world of the Washington orbit, it was to take advantage of a helpless man, especially one who’d recently lost his muscle. Specifically, one who was helpless and had lost his muscle and was close to power and closer still to panic.
Behind such a man was usually a hell of a story. And Bruce knew how to get it. He’d made copies of the photographs.
Brigadier General Lester Cooper watched the man with the attaché case walk down the path to his car. The Vermont snow was deep and the path not shoveled well. But the driveway was fine. The snow plow had done a fine job all the way out to the road. And the man’s car was a heavy automobile with huge snow tires. He’d be all right.
Such men were always all right. Men who worked in skyscrapers for other men like Aaron Green. They moved in cloud-high offices with soft carpeting and softer lights. They spoke quietly into telephones and referred to complex figures—most often with decimal points and percentages within those decimals.
They dealt in the subtleties Brigadier General Lester Cooper abhorred.
He watched the large automobile turn around in the small parking area and start off down the drive. The man waved, but there was no smile, no sense of friendliness. No thanks for having been treated hospitably in spite of the fact that he had arrived without warning, without announcement.
The subtleties.
And the news he brought to the Rutland farmhouse was a subtlety Lester Cooper felt he would never understand. But then, they didn’t ask him to understand, just be aware of, follow instructions. For the good of everyone. The Pentagon would benefit more than any other area of the government; he was assured of that.
Andrew Trevayne, President of the United States.
It was incredible.
It was preposterous.
But if the man from Aaron Green said it was a realistic consideration, Andrew Trevayne was halfway to his inauguration.
Lester Cooper turned away from the path and started back toward the house. As he approached the thick Dutch door he changed his mind and veered off to the left. The powdered snow was lying loose above a hard base, and his feet sank in up to his ankles. He had no boots or galoshes on, but the cold wetness didn’t bother him. There was the winter of forty-four, when he hopped off tanks into the snow-cold mud, and it hadn’t bothered him then either. Patton, George Patton, kept yelling at him: «… Cooper, you stupid son-of-a-bitch! Get the goddamn regulation boots on! We’re barrel-assing into a Kraut winter, and you act like it was springtime in Georgia! Take that shit-eating grin off your face!»
He’d yelled right back at George; always smiling, of course. Boots inhibited his tank driving. Shoes were fine.
Patton.
This would have been beyond him, too.
Cooper reached the end of the backyard lawn, fully covered with virgin snow. The sky was dull; one could hardly see the mountains in the distance. But they were there, and not treacherous, and he would look at them every day for the rest of his life—in a very short time.
As soon as he organized the logistics of Aaron Green’s strategy—his part of it, the military end. It wouldn’t be difficult; the combined services were all aware of the enormous contributions of Genessee Industries. They were also aware that the future held the greatest military promise in history if Genessee became—as they wanted it to become—the true civilian spokesman for all of them. And if Andrew Trevayne was Genessee’s candidate, that was all that mattered.
The word would be passed throughout every post, airfield, training center, and naval station in the world. No identification yet, only the alert. The advance cue that a name would be forthcoming, and that name was the man Genessee Industries and the Pentagon wanted as President. Schedules with proper allocations of space and time should be prepared, allowing for indoctrination courses for all officers and enlisted men and women. Under the heading of «Current Affairs,» of course. Separate facilities for regular and reserve personnel, as approaches would vary considerably.
It could be done. None of the uniformed services wanted to slide back to the days before Genessee Industries was such a large part of its line of supply.
And when the order came to release the name, Xeroxes and printing presses and mimeograph machines in all parts of the earth where the American serviceman was stationed or at sea would be activated around the clock. From Fort Dix, New Jersey, to Bangkok, Thailand; from Newport News to Gibraltar.
The military could deliver over four million votes.
Lester Cooper wondered if it would come to that. Would it really be Andrew Trevayne?
And why?
It would have been comforting to call Robert Webster and find out what he knew; that wasn’t possible now. The man from Aaron Green had made it clear.