Dragonfly

The President got up and went to the Georgian window behind his desk. He stared at the traffic that moved through the rain down on Pennsylvania Avenue. He obviously knew, as did McAlister, that the name did not really matter. Getting the name was important not for practical reasons; it was merely a matter of face now. “What would you do if I refused to give you that assurance? Would you tell me his name — or defy me?”

“Mr. President,” McAlister said, “I would do neither.”

“Neither?”

“I would resign, sir.”

Not turning from the window, the fingers of both hands tangled behind his back and writhing like trysting worms, the President said, “That's out of the question. This has to be resolved quickly, and you're the only man I know who can handle it. You have my assurance.”

“You promise, sir?”

“Yes, Bob. The Chairman will get the name twelve hours before your man gets to Peking. My promise. Don't push it any further.”

Doggedly, McAlister said, “One step further, sir.”

The President said nothing.

McAlister said, “I wouldn't want to talk any more about this if I thought we were being recorded. The tape might get into the hands of a Committeeman.”

Turning to face them, grinning humorlessly, the President said, “Do you think any President since Nixon would be foolish enough to record his own conversations?”

McAlister nodded. “My man's name is David Canning.”

“He's on assignment here at the White House,” Rice said.

“Why Canning?” the President asked.

McAlister told him why. He also explained that Canning would travel as Theodore Otley and would leave Washington in two hours, on a four o'clock flight to Los Angeles. “I'm sending him by a series of civilian airlines, from Los Angeles to Tokyo and finally to Peking.”

“That seems a waste of time,” Rice said, shaking his head disapprovingly. “Why not lay on a direct government flight—”

“Which might easily be set up to explode over the ocean,” the President said.

“Exactly,” McAlister said. “The Committee would have to know about it. They'd either put a bomb aboard here or at a fuel stop on the way.”

Reluctantly, grudgingly, Rice said, “I suppose you're right. We've been behaving like chronic paranoids, but they've left us no other way to behave.”

The President said, “You'll be trying to break the Dragonfly project from this end?”

“Yes, sir,” McAlister said.

“Have you been doing any thinking about why Dragonfly hasn't already been triggered?”

“That's the question that kept me up most of last night,” McAlister said. “I can't find an answer I like.”

Looking at his watch, the President said, “Anything else, then? Anything more you need, Bob?”

“In fact, there is, sir,” McAlister said as he got to Ms feet.

“Name it.”

“I'd like twelve federal marshals put under my control, four men each in three eight-hour shifts. I'll need them for the protection of my investigative staff.”

Glancing at Rice, the President said, “See to that, Andy.”

Rice struggled out of his chair, which squeaked with relief. “They will be in your office tomorrow morning at eight-thirty,” he said. “You can brief them then and divide them whatever way you want.”

“Thank you.”

“And now I have a request,” the President said.

McAlister said, “Sir?”

“From now on, don't go anywhere without your bodyguard.”

“I don't plan to, sir.”

“It'll get worse. They'll get desperate the closer we get to Dragonfly.”

“I know,” McAlister said.

“My God,” Rice said, “What are we coming to when the highest officers of the land can't trust their own subordinates? These reactionary bastards have nearly driven us into a police state!”

No one had anything to say about that.

When McAlister left the Oval Office, the warrant officer looked up to see if the President might be at the open door with news of the world's end. Then he went on with his reading.

McAlister felt a bit weak behind the knees and in the pit of his stomach. He had known four Presidents and had been appointed to office by two of them. He had seen that they were all flawed, sometimes tragically so. They were all, in whole or part, vain and foolish, misinformed and sometimes even crooked. Yet he had not lost his respect for the office — perhaps because it was the keystone of that system of laws and justice which he so admired — and he stood in awe of any halfway decent man who held it. His intellect and emotions had reached a compromise on this subject, and he experienced no need to analyze his feelings. This was simply how he was, and he had grown accustomed to the weakness in his knees and stomach after every conference in the Oval Office.

Don't you know you're from a fine Boston family with a forty-foot genealogical chart? he asked himself. A Boston family. There is no better. Didn't you listen to your mother? She told you at least a million tunes. And your father. Didn't anything he said get through to you? You're Bostonian, old Bostonian! You're from the stock that patronized the Atlantic Monthly, and your father was a member of the Porcellian Club at Harvard! Don't you know that no one's better than you?

He laughed softly.

He still felt a bit weak.

When McAlister entered the back corridor, the guard at the end saw him coming and said, “Leaving now, Mr. McAlister?”

“As soon as I get my coat.”

The guard pulled on his rain slicker and went out to see that the Mercedes was brought around.

Beau Jackson was not in the cloakroom.

McAlister put down his attache case and went to the open-front wall-length closet. As he put on his coat he noticed a thick black-and-gold hardbound book lying on the hat shelf. With the curiosity of a book lover, he picked it up and looked at the title: The Complete Kafka — The Stories, Annotated and Analyzed. On the flyleaf there was a three-inch-square bookplate:

From the Library of

b. w. jackson

Beau Jackson came out of the lavatory into the cloakroom. He stopped and stared at the book in McAlister's hands, and said, “Somebody left that here last week. It yours, Mr. McAlister?”

“Belongs to a B.W. Jackson. Know him?”

The black man smiled. “Surprise you?”

“Not really. I've always figured you can't be what you seem to be.” He put the book back on the hat shelf.

Carrying McAlister's attache case, Jackson walked him across the cloakroom, into the hall. “Then I guess I belong here.”

McAlister pulled up his hood, buttoned his coat collar. “Oh?”

Handing him the case, Jackson said, “Around here a lot of people just aren't what they seem to be.”

Grinning, McAlister said, “You mean that you're disappointed with the way the boss has been running things? You're sorry you voted for him?”

“I did vote for him,” Jackson said. “And for once in my life I figure maybe I pulled the right lever.” His broad, dark face was sober, almost glum. “Compared to that Sidney Greenstreet of his, the boss is as real and genuine and unphony as they come.”

“Sidney Greenstreet?” McAlister said, perplexed.

At the end of the hall, the guard came back inside and said, “Car's ready, Mr. McAlister.”