Q Clearance

"Godd—"

  "Pick it up, Mario! And tell me what you see."

  Burnham closed his eyes, willing himself into the bathroom with Epstein. He saw Epstein lift the toilet-seat cover and find nothing and want to slam it down but instead lift the toilet seat itself, and there, between the two little rubber bumper buttons, see Scotch-taped to the underside of the toilet seat—

  "A tape."

  "A microcassette, to be precise. Take it into your office and listen to a little bit of it. I'm sure you'll recognize it, and when you do, I know you'll be eager to see the chap who'll be visting you in about . . . five minutes."

  "Why sh—"

  "Because I have all the rest of them, Mario, all the ones that were in your closet there, the ones that go back God-knows-how-many weeks, starring you and all kinds of fascinating folks saying things—I haven't had time to listen to all of them—that would probably set the capital ablaze and for sure would cause the President to stick a Roman candle up your ass and blow you all the way to Uranus, let alone the interesting dilemma they'd pose for the Justice Department, since taping other people's conversations without telling them is an awkwardness especially for someone in your exalted position.

  "The fellow who'll be coming to visit you will have another tape for you, Mario, to prove his bona fides. It's a particularly juicy one—you refer to Benjamin Winslow as being like Stevie Wonder, you have to lead him from pillar to post—and the fellow will give it to you as a gesture of good faith. Listen to what he has to say, Mario, 'cause if I hear that you didn't . . . well, you better buy yourself a couple extra television sets 'cause your mother'll be calling you tonight to tell you that you're all over the evening news!"

  Burnham spat out the last few words and slammed down the phone.

  "Wow!" said Eva.

  "Mondo macho." Burnham smiled. "I feel like Charles Bronson."

  "You think he'll see Hal?"

  "I know he will, unless he's gone kamikaze overnight. He doesn't dare not. But whether he'll do what Hal will tell him to do . . . that's something else. I have faith in Dr. Johnson."

  "What's he got to do with this?"

  "He said patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. I don't think Mario's so close to the end of his rope that he'll suddenly turn patriotic. None of this 'I regret that I have but one life to give to my country' crap for Mario. He's enough of an egomaniac to see that when defeat is inevitable, there's wisdom in compromise.

  "I hope."

  FOURTEEN

  They sat on the bed, eating Vietnamese food that Hal had ordered according to Eva's meticulous guidance.

  "What time is it?" asked Eva.

  "Three minutes later than when you asked last," Burnham replied. "Seven forty-eight." He said to Hal, "What's it like out?"

  "Raining. It's been raining all day."

  Burnham and Eva had not been out of this room in more than thirty-six hours. Hal had brought them razors and toothbrushes and shampoo and deodorant, had used Burnham's bank card to collect several hundred dollars in cash, had taken all their clothing to a one-day cleaner. They had read and watched television and made love and watched more television and made love.

  "Shall I pour gasoline over you and set you afire?" Burnham had asked as they reclined on the rumpled sheets.

  "If that turns you on," Eva said. "But why?"

  "It's appropriate, don't you think? Here we are in a bunker, waiting to see if we'll live or die, and your name is Eva, and—"

  She bit him on the shoulder. "No Hitler jokes. I'm a very sensitive person."

  "You're the only kid on the block who can object to Hitler jokes because they make your mom look bad."

  At seven fifty-seven, Hal plugged in the portable TV and brought it over to the bed. "You care what network?"

  "ABC," Burnham said. "They've got the ammunition, so they'll fire first."

  The presidential news conference began exactly at eight o'clock. Epstein had attempted to schedule the news conference for last night, as Hal had requested, but two of the three networks had complained bitterly about the short notice: One had scheduled a live prime-time special featuring every pop singer in the world (most via satellite) in a simultaneous rendition of the song "Food, Glorious Food" as a tribute to the starving multitudes in Africa; the other was locked into a baseball Game of the Week that promised to gamer great numbers because of the participation of the Mets' rookie pitcher Corns McGinty (already 10-0 on the season), who pitched in one baseball shoe and one ballet slipper due to an agonizing pediatric affliction which he refused to have corrected for fear it would disrupt the perfection of his balance on the mound, a refusal supported by his opponents as well as his teammates, for Corns threw a baseball faster than Kevin Curran could serve a tennis ball (somewhere around 130 miles an hour), and if his balance were to be disrupted to the point where a pitch got away from him, the batter would likely spend the rest of the season in a dark clinic.

  Burnham supposed that he could have forced the news conference for last night, but the risk was that only one network would broadcast it, which would have meant that seven-eighths of America wouldn't have watched it.

  The President looked tired and, it seemed to Burnham (though he was aware that he might be projecting his own feelings onto the President), a little sad.

  He opened with a short statement about Honduras. He reiterated his pledge never to send American boys to fight in a foreign jungle unless and until he discerned a direct threat to the security of the United States. He refused to impose the American democratic ideal on people who showed no inclination to embrace it. He described the aid packages he had proposed for Honduras and Nicaragua. He said he had directed the Secretary of State to schedule "full and frank discussions" with Honduras, Nicaragua and the Soviet Union, and that he hoped to meet soon with the Soviet premier. Finally, he said he recognized that there were some in the Congress and in the country at large who advocated a stronger, more confrontational stand against socialism in general and the Russians in particular, and he wanted to reassure them that he was not giving the forces of revolution a free hand to poison this hemisphere. He recalled the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and pledged to respond to any similar challenge with similar force. For emphasis, he closed with a couple of the more stirring lines from John F. Kennedy's inaugural address.

  Exactly as Burnham had urged him to do.

  A frisson of pride made the hair stand up on Burnham's arms, and he took Eva's hand.

  Then the President invited questions.

  As always, the first question was from the senior wire service correspondent, a blowsy woman who liked to ask outrageous questions ("Is it true, sir, that you've been seeing a psychic?") that attracted attention from the fringe media (Paul Harvey, Entertainment Tonight, The National Enquirer) and made her a celebrity worthy of inclusion in People's list of Washington eccentrics.

  Tonight, though, she knew that the eyes and ears of the nation would be on the burgeoning spy scandal, and so, with a malevolent leer at ABC's gadfly Sam Donaldson, she stole his precious air and said, "Mr. President, ABC's been telling the world they're about to prove you've got spies working under your nose right here in the White House. What d'you have to say to that?"

  "Sally," the President said, favoring her with the recognition of her name and then turning to the television cameras and—more in sorrow than in anger, it seemed—addressing the American people, "there are times when every President wishes that the First Amendment could be put on 'hold' for a little while."

  A nervous titter rippled through the audience, for these were the high priests of the cult of the First Amendment, and any suggestion of an assault on their sanctum was a sacrilege.

  "But as soon as he thinks that, he chastises himself, for he knows that a free press is the bulwark of a free society."

  Having thus made suitable obeisances at the altar of investigative reporting, the President felt at liberty to proceed.

  "I wish ABC had come to me before they reported that st
ory—that rumor, 'cause that's what it was and it didn't become a story till a lot of people chose to believe it without checking on it—'cause I would've told them what really was going on and appealed to them to let it run its course. But they didn't and that's their right."

  A few reporters coughed in polite disbelief.

  "That's good," Burnham said. "I wonder who thought of that."

  "I did," said Hal, beaming. "I reminded Mr. Epstein that there was no way to confirm what never happened, so the President might as well take the offense."

  Burnham smiled. "You must've had a good time."

  "A fiesta."

  "... sick of having rumors fly around," the President was saying, " 'cause a rumor uncontradicted grows up into a kind of fact, and before you know it it's an accepted truth.

  "So here's what happened—the unvarnished facts: We'd been hearing for some time that there were leaks coming out of the White House. Nobody said they were intentional, nobody said they were serious, but if there's one piece of real estate that America can't afford to have leaking, it's the White House."

  "Is that true?" asked Eva.

  "Yup," Burnham said. "It's what he'd been told, and it makes sense, so it must be true."

  "And so, unbeknownst to any other member of the White House staff, I brought in an agent to work directly for me—he was a staff assistant, sort of a jack-of-all-trades—and I arranged for him to have access to the topmost of all top secret documents ..."

  "Unbeknownst to him, too," Eva said.

  "No," said Burnham. "He's convinced he was following his instincts. He knew I was working on some secret mission all along, and now he's being proven right."

  "... spurious, of course," continued the President, "excellent replicas of the real thing that would have—and did— convinced anybody, including the Soviets. This assistant was encouraged to handle the documents in a routine, even careless fashion, for we were eager to see when and if their contents surfaced."

  "He can't believe that!" said Eva.

  "Oh yes he can." Burnham smiled. "Remember, Lyndon Johnson said his grandfather died at the Alamo, which was utter horseshit, but he believed it because it was important to him."

  ". . . did begin to surface," the President said, "in another piece of Washington real estate, this one owned by our friends from the Soviet Union. How did we know? Well, with today's technological wonders, it's almost impossible to keep a secret unless you keep it right here"—the President touched his temple—"and never tell another soul. Some of you may remember the typewriters in our embassy in Moscow. The Soviets put sensors in those typewriters that read what was being typed and broadcast it to them as it came out of the typewriter. You'll be glad to know we have gremlins of our own. Every electronic signal the Russians send out of their embassy is intercepted by us and decoded and examined before we send it on its way. This is oversimplified, but I'm sure you understand. They prob'ly have some we don't know about, and we won't know about 'em till we find 'em, but we will fmd 'em."

  "Mario briefed the hell out of him," Eva said.

  "Everything Mario holds dear was on the line—his job, his access, his power. Besides, Hal briefed the hell out of him." Burnham assumed a presidential tone and said to Hal, "You did good, son."

  "... month or so," said the President, "we found that the leaks were in our standard routing procedures for documents. Too many things are classified these days, so the currency of classification has been devalued. When requisitions for toilet paper are classified 'secret,' it's hard to take secrecy seriously. Some documents were misplaced. Some were thrown in the trash instead of being shredded. They all became bait for the scavengers the Soviets have planted around every capital city in the Western world.

  "I called the Russian ambassador and told him what we'd found—a courtesy call, you might say, since I have reason to believe that when they found out we were feeding 'em bogus intelligence, they were the ones called ABC and sicced 'em on our trail—and of course he denied everything."

  Sam Donaldson couldn't contain himself. Beet-red, he jumped to his feet and preempted Sally's follow-up question. *'Are you saying ABC was used by the Russians? Sir."

  The President turned slowly toward Donaldson, a placid smile on his face. "Why hello, Sam," he said. "Used? Gosh, I'd hate to think that sophisticated journalists could be used. Deceived, maybe."

  "And could you tell us . . . Sir . . . what's happened to your . . . secret agent?"

  "That, I am pleased to say, is none of your business." The President turned to face the cameras. "He is an American of untarnished patriotism, happy to work without public recognition in the service of his country. I wish we had more like him. Suffice it to say—"

  The cameras closed on the President's face. His eyes were moist.

  Burnham held his breath.

  "—that this man I will not name has been awarded a medal I will not name, a medal he will never see. Next."

  The President pointed at a reporter in the back of the room, who rose to ask a question about the deficit.

  Eva squeezed Burnham's hand. "He's either a hell of actor," she said, "or he really loved you."

  "Let's go," was all Burnham could say.

  FIFTEEN

  Evelyn Witt didn't see the letter until she uncovered her typewriter. The unmarked white envelope had been slipped between the paper bale and the platen. Her name was written on the envelope in ink, in a handwriting she didn't recognize.

  She slit open the envelope. Inside was a sheet of yellow legal paper wrapped around another, smaller envelope on which was written 'The President."

  She unfolded the yellow paper and read:

  Dear Evelyn:

  If you'll be so kind as to give the enclosed to the President, I'll be forever in your debt.

  I'm already in your debt more than you will ever know, but that's another story.

  If ever you think of me, I hope it will be with a scintilla of the affection with which I think of you.

  Timothy Burnham

  Dear Timothy, she thought. She had warned him that the life of a presidential favorite was spectacular but short, like the life of a moth. She wondered where he was, what he was doing. She wondered what had happened to him. It was all very mysterious.

  But her years in the White House had accustomed her to mysteries without resolutions.

  She picked up the smaller envelope and took it into the Oval Office.

  The President was leaning back in his chair, with his feet on the desk, reading the editorial page of the Post.

  “Morning, Mr. President," Evelyn said.

  "Morning, Evie. Seen the Post?"

  “Not yet. Good news?"

  "Better'n a spot on the lung." The President swung his feet to the floor. "Honduras pitched out all their Soviet advisors. Even Boy George concedes it's just as well we didn't start World War Three over a bunch of bananas." Boy George was the President's nickname for George Will.

  "This was on my typewriter," Evelyn said, and she passed the envelope to the President. "I don't know how it got there."

  "What is it?"

  "It's from Timothy Burnham."

  "Oh yeah?" The President smiled as he tore the end off the envelope. "Where's he at?"

  "I don't know. Like some coffee?"

  "Yes. Yes, thanks." The President kicked his feet up again and leaned back.

  He had thought of Burnham at least once a day in the two weeks since he had disappeared. Normally, the President's mind was disciplined enough to keep him from dwelling on what had been or what might have been: Enough new problems surfaced every minute to keep him fully occupied. But it was those new problems that brought Burnham to mind— minor things, mostly, things on which a fresh, unbiased, honest and unafraid opinion could cast a helpful perspective. Cut through the bullshit.

  The new fellow Epstein had given him, nominally as his Appointments Secretary, was as useful as a third nostril. An ass-kisser, scared of everybody.

  The President nev
er stopped long enough to realize it, let alone articulate it, but he missed old Tim.

  He had been right about Tim all along, and he accepted Tim's sudden departure as part of the price he (and all Americans) had to pay for maintaining the nation's security. It had been worth it just for the pleasure of watching Mario eat crow, sit there looking all splotchy and nervous and having to admit that Tim was better wired than he was.

  The President smoothed the sheet of yellow paper on his thigh.

  Nice handwriting, for a man, he thought idly. Most men's handwriting looked like scrambled eggs.

  Dear Mr. President:

  It's better that you don't know ,where I am or what I'm doing, but I wanted to let you know that you were right—about a great many things.

  You suspected that I had an "in" with the Russians, and you were right, though it's a different kind of "in" than I, for one, realized.

  You felt that we should not go off half-cocked and invade Honduras—I didn't tell you, you knew it, all I did was show you that you knew it—and you were right. By now I imagine the rest of the world is catching up with you. But you were first.

  You helped me, in ways you'll never know, to discover what's right about myself, and for that I thank you.

  As time goes by, you may hear things about me that make you question the faith you had in me. For what it's worth, I flatter myself that you were right to have that faith.

  If the fur does fly about me, I hope you'll remember what my friend Samuel Johnson said: "As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly."

  With respect and gratitude,

  TYB

  The President read the letter again. Then he leaned forward and pushed the intercom button on his desk.

  "Evie," he said, "this Samuel Johnson Tim refers to. Who does he work for?"

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  After graduating from Harvard, Peter Benchley

  went on to become a journalist and a speechwriter for