A Separate War and Other Stories (25 page)

“Mnh. Well. No. That is. A bill, the Selective Service renewal, Ashby was going to sign it tomorrow…”

“Really?” Braxn smiled.

“
Yes
, damn it!” He shot forward and leaned back again. “He…we talked him into it.”

“
Tripling
the draft call?”

“Of course. If we don't, West Pakistan's bound to go under.”

“Bullshit.” Braxn took a cigarette out of the ornate case on the desk and waved it alight. “Ashby never believed that. If you believe it, you've been listening to your own speeches too uncritically.”

“Huh! Nevertheless. I think you may want to reevaluate your own position, Ross.”

“Cut-and-dried, Arthur. It's another Vietnam. We're pulling out as soon as—”

“Ross, you were a military man, weren't you?”

“You know damn well I was. West Point.”

“Oh yes. Purple Heart. Silver Star. For bravery.
In
Vietnam.”

“That's right.”

“You were a real crackerjack combat officer.”

“Get to the point.”

“Yes.” He blew a leisurely ring that floated a foot and broke up in the air currents. “A man has to have military service before he can even think of running for office. It's the American way. Combat, preferably. I was in Korea, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Yes. A, uh, man came to my office tonight. With a series of photographs.”

“How intriguing.”

“The man was your copilot, Ross. On the mission when your helicopter went down and you won the Silver Star, defending it.”

“And?”

“The photographs indicate that you were not shot down, but were grounded by mechanical failure. And that your wound was self-inflicted.”

“Get out.”

“Now just a minute, Ross…I don't for a second believe…”

“Out.”

“I was just…”

“Listen, Tweed. Any military doctor can look at that wound, even after thirty years, and tell you that it came from a .50-caliber machine-gun bullet. A man can no more ‘self-inflict' a .50-caliber wound than he can shoot himself with a howitzer.”

“Ross, Ross, I
know
that. I told you, I don't for a moment believe him. But you know as well as I that once the accusation is made, any—”

“What do you, does he, want?”

“He's a fanatic militarist, Ross. He wants you to sign the draft bill.”

Braxn laughed, one short bark. “I'll think about it. Tell him I'll think about it.” He rose and glowered down at the little old man. “It was a pleasure speaking to you, Senator.”

Tweed levered himself out of the chair and laid the smoldering cigar in the little silver bowl. “I hope you'll…be in touch with me.”

“Good-bye, Senator.” When the man had disappeared behind the mass of oak, Braxn punched the phone. “What do we have on the old Tweed?”

“Almost nothing, sir. He has a mistress, but he's had her for thirty years. She's ugly as sin.”

“That'd gain him more votes than it'd cost him. Put some of the staff to work on him. Then you get some sleep. I'm going to do the same.”

Braxn left his office and, accompanied by the ubiquitous Secret Service guard (not even the White House was considered safe, after the audacious Agnew assassination attempt), retired to his personal quarters. At least the guard stayed outside the door.

“Thanks, Roger.” He closed the door gently so as not to awaken Harriman's wife, presumably asleep in the master bedroom. They wouldn't be moving upstairs to the executive apartments, of course, until Elizabeth Ashby had moved out.

He went into the study and sat at the huge desk. The antique overstuffed swivel chair groaned and squeaked a pleasant fugue of old bearings and new leather. He started at the top of the big stack of papers in the
in
box.

“Ross?” Standing in the door, in the half-light from the desk lamp, Linda Harriman looked almost pretty. She stepped closer, and the illusion vanished.

“Morning, darling.” Braxn watched her approach, putting on Harriman's smile of genuine affection. Thirty years before, people had whispered “political suicide” when Ross went out and married the homeliest girl in Madison society. But the years that had blunted the fragile beauty of her contemporaries had been kind to her, softening planes and juts into gentle curves.

“You shouldn't be up.” She took the cigarette from his mouth and laid it in the ashtray. “It's going to be a hard day tomor—today.”

“I got a nap earlier.” He half turned back to the desk.

She tugged a curl of his hair. “Liar.” She smiled. “Try to get some sleep before you jump into the fray again.”

“Okay.” He chuckled and squeezed her hand good-bye.

When she was gone, Braxn started to riffle through the hundred pages of synopses Ashby's staff had prepared: summations of bills, personal requests, appointments, all needing action in the next week or ten days. Luckily, Harriman had a reputation for being a fast reader (with regrettably shallow comprehension).

In a half hour he had memorized the synopses and decided on tentative courses of action. He reached for the phone and tapped out Fred's combination.

An unfamiliar face peered out at him and seemed about to phrase a nasty comment, then saw who he was. “Oh! Mr. President—Let me get Mr. Aller.”

“Don't wake him up on my account. Just checking on something.”

“He's awake, sir, I'll get him.” After a minute, Fred Aller filled the screen with his unkempt sparse white hair, salt-and-pepper stubble, and piercing grey eyes.

“Damn it, Fred, I told you to get some—”

“I know, sir. Something big came up.”

“About what?”

“Might be something we can use on Tweed.”

“And I wasn't called?” Braxn growled.

“Mr. President, I thought you were asleep, too; you need it as much as I do.” His eyes clicked that quarter of an inch out of line that showed he was staring at the screen. “Maybe you didn't need it as much. Still have TV makeup on?”

“No, hell no. Got some uppers from the doc. What's the scoop on Tweed?”

“Same thing he wants to pull on you. Of course we have spies—”

“What!”

“—not in your office, sir, in his. Holographic infrared laser bug, with its optical locus in the glass over an eighteenth-century painting that he thinks has been hanging in front of his desk since the Roosevelt administration. The first, Teddy.”

“Same thing…his war record?”

“That's right, sir, but in his case it's more or less true. He was commanding a frontline infantry platoon in Korea, and got fragged, hit by a—”

“—grenade, yeah, I know what ‘fragged' means.”

“Rifle grenade. Anyhow, he was evacuated to the rear for treatment, where they taped him up and
then
sent him to a hospital in Japan, diagnosing neuresthenia.”

“Shell shock?”

“Right. That could cost him a few vet votes right there. Lots of people think that shell shock is just a nice word for cowardice. This isn't on his medical record, by the way: he covered his tracks pretty well.

“But that's not half of it. He lounged around Japan for a month—whoring it up—and then got transferred back Stateside, where he got a Pentagon job, reporting to Walter Reed once a month for examination.”

“I don't know,” Braxn said, “it's good stuff, but it's too diffuse. An awful lot of people wouldn't see anything particularly reprehensible about any of that.”

“Ah, sir, but the clincher…the way he got out of Japan. The second-in-command in that hospital was his
uncle
—whom he later got appointed to a high place in the Public Health Service…a post he held for only three months before being discharged for gross incompetence and dishonesty.”

“Hah!” Braxn slapped a palm on the desk. “That might do it. Can you get me a package of evidence? Xeroxes and such, before noon?”

“Already made up, sir.”

“Wonderful. Call the old bastard's secretary and tell him…the president desires the senator's company for lunch tomorrow.”

 

The White House chef had prepared a mild Chicken Kiev, in deference to Tweed's aging entrails, which the two men washed down with a white Bordeaux, 1983; a good year, but not quite as good as the most junior senator would have gotten, had he belonged to the president's party.

Both men were in formal black, as, soon after lunch, they would have to get into their respective black limousines and join the cortege bearing Ashby's remains down Pennsylvania Avenue Mall (cleared of pedestrian traffic for the occasion), twisting around to the Lincoln Memorial, and across the bridge to Arlington Cemetery. Braxn reflected that Tweed wouldn't have any trouble looking appropriately sad, once he saw the contents of the manila folder sitting in the backseat of his waiting limousine.

After lunch Braxn escorted Tweed to the secluded atrium that Ashby had had built, just after his inauguration. It was a pleasant green place to go to relax and was incidentally filled with disruptors and noise generators in every frequency, making it theoretically impossible to bug. The slight hiss and hum where the little watchdogs spilled over into audible frequencies was nicely masked by a soothing miniature waterfall.

Braxn produced brandy and offered the old man a Havana.

“No thanks, Ross. I used to smoke 'em—before you were getting started in politics…but Castro. Had to lose my taste for them.” He accepted the brandy, though. Braxn lit up a Havana and Tweed ignited a black-rope Toscani.

“A pity to rush a good cigar,” Braxn said, taking a deep puff and letting the smoke trickle out of one corner of his mouth. “But I suppose we have some business.”

“Business, yes. Yes.”

“Your, uh, your photographer friend…”

“Yes, hum, he says he's having bids submitted by TIME/LIFE and—”

“Damn!” Braxn jumped out of his chair.

“Calm down, calm down, Ross. You aren't implicated yet. All they know is that it's a scandal involving a ‘high government official.' They'll be bidding against the
Times
, WPI, and Scanlan Syndicate.”

“And if I comply with your—
his
demand, what does he tell the firm that wins the bid?”

Tweed chuckled, a sound somewhere between a death rattle and a pant. “Don't worry, Ross. We have an alternate—”

“To throw to the wolves. So another Liberal Democrat, instead of me, gets the gaff. An unattractive dilemma, Senator.”

“No, no, no…
not
a Lib, Ross. One of my own.”

“Not
Sam
!”

Tweed answered with a death's-head grin wreathed in grey smoke.

“God! You are—you're the most…” Braxn sat down and puffed his cigar back to life. He spun around to stare at the manicured lawn and smile.

He came back around, puffing away, staring at Tweed through a blue fragrant nimbus…then he jerked the cigar out of his mouth and laughed, one explosive cough. Tweed jumped.

“Tweed. Oh, Tweed…I don't know how many really big mistakes you've made in your career, but this one has got to take the prize. You don't lean on a
president
, not this way.”

“On the contrary,” he said quietly, “I've made a career of it.”

“There's a manila folder on the seat of your limousine. You go down and read it, and then decide whether you—”

Tweed smiled. “Bribery?”

“What a coarse word. No, no money involved, just a trade. Something similar to the commodity you hold.”

“Impossible, Ross. There's no way for you to trade your political future for mine. I won't be running next—”

“Bullshit. You've been threatening to retire for twenty years. You could no more stop running than an animal caught in a forest fire.”

Tweed finished off his brandy in one gulp and stood up. “You young…look, Ross, you're out of your
league.
Why don't you just—”

“Why don't
you
just read the damn thing, and we'll talk tomorrow.”

“Maybe. I may have an appointment with the ladies and gentlemen of the press.” Tweed turned on his heel and stalked out.

Braxn felt a coldness in the pit of his stomach and was startled to realize that it was fear. He'd never been afraid before, and now he was afraid of this decrepit old man. He swallowed some brandy, and the fire fed the coldness.