The President's Angel (4 page)

The military poets did not understand why the antistellar pacifists did not hear peace, as they did, when words of war were sung. The pacifists did not understand why songs of war were heard when they preached peace.

At one time the warriors would appear to win, and then trillions and quadzillions would be appropriated for development of weapons that could ride on solar winds; at another time the opposition would be in precedence, and all work on the systems would stop. For years it had gone on that way.

The reason that both sides kept repeating the same arguments, increasing only the decibels, is that neither could believe that its opponents could listen and yet disagree. Therefore they spoke louder. Or at a higher pitch. Thinking they hadn't been heard.

What they were squabbling about was the best way to have peace.

After he saw the angel, the President found he knew things. He first noticed it at a staff meeting. He looked over at General Wallace across the boardroom table and saw he was thinking of his gambling debts; and also whether his wife had taken his uniform to the cleaners; he was being taken to the cleaners, and he was goddamned if he would let the enemy clean-sweep our country, his country, his beautiful clean country, making promises they wouldn't keep. You couldn't trust the dirty Empire.

He looked at Admiral Epps, a fine, ruddy-faced man with a broad grin and an easy way of spreading his freckled hands, palms down on the table before him; a likable man, with a sparkle in his eyes and a ready laugh. The President saw him breaking eggs in an iron skillet, the yolks and whites running—

“You look fit.” He leaned over to Admiral Epps, whispering behind his hand. “What did you have for breakfast this morning?”

“Fried eggs,” Epps whispered back. “But not as good as when I cooked them myself. Mess servants,” he finished with a cheerful grimace. Nonetheless, the yolks spread in his stomach in an aura of well-being.

At this staff meeting, Jim Sierra (Domestic Affairs) fought as usual with Steven Dirk (Internal Affairs)—the two men always disagreed.

Jim leapt nervously to his feet, then sat again and shot his cuffs: “For Christ's sake, Steve. That's the worst idea you've come up with yet. Run to Congress with that baby and they'll slaughter us.”

The President intervened. “Why?” he asked quietly.

“Look, Kelly's for it.” Jim counted off his fingers angrily. “Tim, Mark Hatter … In all I count fucking thirty-two. That's all. Wallace and Andrews are both waffling—waiting to catch the wind. And if you can't get them, you've got fucking shit. We'll come away eating fucking shit.”

That's how men in power talked. Matt had not noticed it before.

“But we have Tony and Governor Butts,” argued the President, coming in on Steve Dirk's side. “The liberals. We can call in debts.”

“Don't bet your ass.” Jim's mouth turned down. “Those bastards'll chuck you to the crocodiles. They haven't a fucking shred of integrity, and Chung Wu isn't what we …”

But the President wasn't listening, because with surprise he saw Jim's jaw still open, gaping, talking, and then he saw only the maw of the mouth and yellowed teeth. Jim's anger flared in horns from his hair; his dark eyes burned. And it was not his angry words Matt heard, but hate. And below the hate another layer, so that Matt covered his eyes with one hand, because the layers were peeling away with terrifying speed: below the anger, hate; below the hatred, fear. Fear hovered before the President's wide view.
It's yellow
, he thought simplistically; and watched in fascination the discovery that the metaphor for cowardice is factual reality. The color yellow played around Jim's head. It lay inside his voice. He was like a pitcher pouring yellow silence on the mahogany table, and it spread into puddles before the council members and Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In a moment the vision was gone. The President could breathe again.

“Is something wrong?” Stan asked.

The President removed his glasses and pressed two fingers in the corners of his eyes. “I'm listening,” he said. “Jim, write me a memo, with your views, and, Steve, you do the same. One page.”

The President dismissed the meeting, grateful that no one guessed what he had seen. At the doorway, he placed one hand on Jim's shoulder in a familiar way.

“Are you all right?” the President asked when the others were out of earshot. “Things okay with Susan and you?”

“Fuck it.” Jim laughed. “How do you know that? We had a fight last night. She's asking for a divorce.”

The President nodded, wondering why he thought Jim had thrown a plate of fish against the wall.

“I threw a plate of fish in the kitchen,” Jim said. He shook his head sheepishly. “Damn stupid thing to do, but Jesus I was mad.”

“You can get back together,” said the President.

“I don't
want
her,” said Jim. “Let her come on her hands and knees, I wouldn't fucking take her back.”

“Come inside.”

When the door closed on them, he threw himself in a chair and rocked back, feet on the desk. “Anything I can do?”

“No sir. She says I work too hard. Hell, what does she expect? She knew that when she married me. She thinks the White House shuts down at night? Sure, I‘m tense. So what else is new. And her going off with some guy behind my back. She's got a
friend
, she says.”

“A lover?” the President asked abstractly.

“Who the hell knows. He listens to fucking classical music, if you can imagine. That's what she likes.” And Jim gave a hoarse grunt that was meant to pass for a laugh. “Anyway, I don't talk to her about my work. No need for worry there, sir.”

The President nodded. “If you don't talk about work, you must have little to say.”

“That's what she says. Actually we don't have a helluva lot to talk about. The kids. Hell, we've been married thirteen years, what does she expect?”

The President could not answer. Had his marriage with Anne been any better? “What do you expect?” he asked.

“I'll tell you what I expect,” Jim answered vehemently. “I expect a person to stand by their word. She made a vow at the altar of God. I don't believe in God, but you make a promise, you goddamn well stick by it.”

“And if you don't?”

“And if you don't, where are any of us, anyway? That's all we've got, isn't it? The law. Our promises. You should be punished, that's all.”

“Politics breeds bad marriages.” The President came to his feet. He wanted to say much more. You'll live through it. This is an opportunity, if you take the dare. Or perhaps he wanted to say that all marriages go through bad times. Hang in there. There were things he could tell about himself and Anne, and private pains he knew. Or maybe he wanted to tell Jim to go home now, take off the afternoon and spend some time with his wife, as he had not done years ago when the business first came up with Anne.

Instead he said nothing. Jim's face closed over his pain.

At the door the President said: “Get me that memo soon as you can.”

He put in a full day's work. He read what had to be read, was briefed on the latest emergencies, signed papers, authorized others for his automatic signature. He posed for photographers, smiling triumphantly over a ceremonial award. He visited an honorary grave and had tea with a visiting minister of state, which became, at his insistence, a scotch and soda. And he smiled and waved for the camera's eye.

In other words, he behaved as people liked their President to do. His special mark as President was simple: He made it look like fun.

But at night, the state dinner over, and he again in his room, where Frank was laying out his pajamas and taking away his clothes to wash and press, the two of them moving quietly around one another, he began to chew his pain.

All day he had known the inner thoughts of those about him—the uneasiness of the foreign minister of state, and how he was playing France against the USA. Sometimes he saw the knowledge as a cloud around a man, and other times he simply knew that something was wrong: A lie was being told, though he might not know the nature of the lie. He saw pain without knowing its source. And cobwebs of loneliness. And an aureole of rage. And also fear. As if he'd lost three layers of skin.

He climbed into bed and lay against the pillows. He didn't know what troubled him the most: the state of his advisors or himself. How could he trust the political judgment of a man so angry he would throw a plate at the red-painted kitchen wall? (White flakes of fish oozing down the red wall and behind the radiator.) Jim's wife had gasped in shocked surprise. Jim had almost hit her instead, and the President saw that too, as clearly as if he had been in the room. He considered General Wallace as well, pressed by personal debts, projecting, under his aggression, fear.… Was everyone acting, and calling on him to act, in response to personal fears?

On the other hand he himself, Matt Adams, was maybe going mad. He turned that over in his mind. He was afraid of that.

“Good night, Mr. President,” said Frank at the door, jacket and trousers over one arm, the President's shoes dangling from his fingertips.

“Good night, Frank.”

“Are you all right, sir?”

It was the second time that day one of his staff had asked.

“I'm fine. Do I look sick?”

“Just that you seem distracted.”

“Ah. Well, good night, Frank.”

He returned to his train of thought. He felt in perfect condition. His skin looked tanned, his body fit. He exercised, drank in moderation, did not smoke. How, then, to explain these flashes of imagination? Were they due to a short circuit on the pathways of the brain? Incipient stroke?

Whatever was happening, he could not speak of it. Neither could he enter a hospital for tests. No one knew better than the President the dangers of letting the opposition entertain the slightest doubt. There was no one he could talk to. He stood alone.

Frank was not the only member of the White House staff to be concerned about the President. Every eye was fixed on him, for the moods of the monarch affect everyone.

In the basement cafeteria, secretaries dropped coins into machines to release a cold, dank sandwich wrapped in plastic, or an apple that had been kept eight months in cold storage, or a white paper cup into which a brownish liquid flowed. It was called tea or coffee or bouillon, but tasted much the same in any case.

As they stood at the machines, purchasing their lunch, they complained in cautious undertones about their bosses, or more loudly about the weather, or their boyfriends, or, in a more general way, of the day. They cast their moods onto the rain or allergies or the barometric pressure of the memos going out that day, or on their hangovers from the night before, which was probably the only truthful one in the list. Nerves were on edge these days. Everything was being done at top speed, with overtime, and little sleep, and the sense of frenzy and hurry was infectious. In the Eastern Orthodox it was said that the Premier's hands shook. Rumor circulated he had Parkinson's disease. The White House waited, pondering the meaning of that turn of events, and who was governing. Intelligence (capital I) reported a wave of repression throughout that Empire, the crackdown being strongest on the news. Therefore no one knew what was going on. Rumors spread also of a military buildup or preparation for invasion.

The secretaries felt the undercurrent of electricity in the Presidential Palace. It gave them pleasant shudders of excitement, for they knew the importance of their work. They hurried back upstairs, to eat their wet cardboard sandwiches at their desks.

In the staff dining room, Jim Sierra sat at a table spread with a linen cloth. Linen napkins were folded into fans in each water tumbler, and the silverware gleamed. He ate with Norman Schwartzjenna, the Chief of Staff, with Steve Dirk, Internal Affairs, and with Bill Garcia, External Affairs. The conversation always revolved around politics and the President.

Not long before, at a state dinner, the President had sat in brooding silence. He had twirled his wineglass and glowered under his brows at the assembly, too absorbed to talk to the white-haired wife of a mining magnate on his left, or to the dyed-blond wife of the prime minister of a large European country on his right. Fifty sophisticated people, the First Lady at their head, had therefore carried the conversation by themselves. Which they did, and well enough, though the President's silence cast a pall. He was not his usual light, laughing, wicked, witty self.

Then, at dessert, the President had suddenly turned to the visiting dignitary from India, seated beyond one of his own dinner partners, caught his eye, and interrupted:

“Do you believe in God?”

“Oh yes.” The Ambassador had nodded amiably. “God, yes. Everyone wise worships a deity.”

Official Washington thought the Ambassador a fool. He spoke in a lilting English that placed the rhythms on all the wrong words. He smiled at the slightest notice, the grin opening his dark face.