He berated himself again, yet again, for going to Justice and humbling himself in front of the man. It had been a foolish error in judgment, a lapse in the strict control by which he lived and functioned. He had succeeded in doing nothing except demean himself. How could he have thought that a cipher like Justice could contribute anything in the way of positive action if he himself could not?
Well, it was a measure of his frustration and his apprehension, he supposed. Apprehension not only for Augustine but for himself; his career was as much on the line as was the President’s.
His career. A doctorate in political science from Harvard, four years at the Institute of Policy Studies, twelve years on the faculty at Harvard and then the Wilson chair at Northwestern, the Pulitzer Prize nomination for his biography of Millard Fillmore, and finally his appointment as domestic affairs advisor. No small accomplishments, any of these. And yet he had always considered his greatest achievements to lie ahead of him: the contributions he would eventually make, not only politically but to history and to American letters, would be the true realization of his capabilities.
But now it seemed probable that his future held little more than bitter unfulfillment and the relative anonymity of the vanquished. That he would be overtaken by that very history which should have enshrined him. And all because he had made the one fatal error of tying himself too tightly to a man he had believed strong but who had turned out to be weak. And vulnerable.
The unfairness of it was galling.
And I can’t let it happen, he told himself grimly. I must not let it happen. In that sense he was like Augustine: unable to give up, unable under any circumstances to passively accept defeat. It was a matter of honor and dignity and pride, a matter of utter belief in the rightness of himself and his role in the power structure of government.
So he would fight. He would stand behind the President and fight, and maybe, just maybe, they could win the struggle. Would win it, had to win it. There had to be ways to find answers to muddled equations, ways to turn things around.
Harper stopped pacing, stood listening to the rumbling clatter of the train. The compartment was beginning to have a claustrophobic effect on him, he realized; it preyed on his senses, made him irritable and dulled his thought processes. And perhaps he was spending too much time alone in here; perhaps he ought to get out and do something instead of pacing around and thinking about something to do. Talk to the President again? No, not tonight. Tomorrow would be better, after Augustine had had a night’s sleep and was more alert and less inclined to be emotional.
Talk to Wexford?
Yes, he thought, Wexford. A calm, rational discussion. Find out just how strong party sentiment was against the President; find out if there were any compromises that could be made. Find some sort of direction. That was what he should have done in the first place, for God’s sake, instead of stupidly seeking out Justice.
Quickly Harper left the compartment and went in search of the attorney general.
Twelve
In the night Augustine awoke and for a disoriented moment did not know where he was. Then he heard the smooth comforting rhythm of the train wheels, and the faint contrapuntal rhythm of the wind outside and of Claire’s breathing beside him, and the confusion passed and left him dully aware of his surroundings.
He shifted position on the berth so that he was lying on his back. What had awakened him? A dream, perhaps, although he could not remember dreaming; a sudden lurch as the Presidential Special negotiated a curve; a sound penetrating from somewhere in the night. Whatever it was, it was not important. What was important was recapturing sleep, the good deep sleep he had fallen into before Claire joined him and then again afterward. He reclosed his eyes, turned his cheek into the pillow.
But sleep did not come at all this time.
He waited a long while for it and it did not come.
He lay poised on the rim of consciousness, listening to the train, feeling the sway of it and its faint vibrations in the mattress beneath him. Gentle, insistent, throbbing. Throbbing. An assault both on the body and on the senses. Throb-and-sway. Throb-and sway…
It gave him an erection.
Not all at once but in small pulsing surges-and he lay still, expecting it to diminish and leave him flaccid again. Instead the surges increased until the erection was complete. A dim elation moved through him. His first full erection in weeks, and one as achingly rigid as any he had had in the viril days of his youth. The sensations in his groin were exquisite.
In careful movements he turned onto his side and put a hand on Claire’s warm hip. “Claire,” he whispered. “Claire?”
She moaned softly but did not wake up.
Augustine tugged his pajama bottoms down, freeing himself, and then drew Claire’s gown up over her buttocks. She stirred, lifting her body to help him, but in a reflexive way that told him she was still asleep. He rolled the gown over her stomach and above her breasts, moved close to her and raised her leg atop his thigh, turning and fitting her body tightly to his, pressing against the warmth of her abdomen.
He caressed her, kissed the pulsebeat in the hollow of her throat. The sensations grew demanding, and when he lowered a hand to touch her he felt that she, too, was ready. He said her name again-and entered her.
She made another moaning sound, one which seemed to him to be approving, but he could not see her face in the darkness, could not tell if her eyes had come open.
He began to move within her, consciously setting his rhythm to that of the train. Throb. Sway. Her hips answered his movements, matched them in perfect unity, and he heard the tempo of her breathing increase; when he said her name yet another time, though, she did not answer. He clutched at her breasts, traced his lips along the line of her jaw. Urgency spiraled inside him, and the thrust of his hips became more rapid, and all around him the train hummed and vibrated.
Throb, sway, throb sway, throbsway, throbsway throbsway throbswaythrobswaythrobsway…
Orgasm overtook him, intense and ecstatic, wringing soft cries from him and from Claire. It seemed to last a long time, so long that it approached the level of pain. When it finally ebbed his body spasmed once and went lax; he lay quiescent, they both lay quiescent, still joined, and he felt languor flowing through him in slow gentle sweeps.
Good, he thought fuzzily, it was really good again. Then the languor deepened and he began to drift on it and on the motion of the train, and after a while he slept. And dreamed about Briggs and a coffin being lowered into the ground in Arlington Cemetery amid a circle of laughing faces. The dream was unsettling, despite its lack of detail or cohesion; he withdrew from it in stages, like someone backing slowly out of a dark movie theater — until he was awake again.
There was no disorientation this time; he was immediately aware of where he was, and of the fact that he was once more lying on his back, no longer touching Claire. The darkness in the compartment was heavy, complete except for faint shadow images dancing on the walls: reflections of passing landscape filtered through the partially shaded windows. Augustine turned his head to look at Claire, saw her as a dim silhouette beneath the blankets. He reached out to touch her hip again, felt the sleek material of her gown instead of bare flesh, and then realized that his own pajama bottoms were snug around his waist.
He could not remember having pulled them up. Had Claire done that for him? On impulse, he put his face close to hers. She was also resting on her back, mouth open, making faint snoring sounds; the position of her body, Augustine thought, was almost exactly as it had been after she had come into the berth with him.
Looking at her, he felt a sudden unease. What if she had not, after all, come awake during the time he was making love to her? What if she failed in the morning to bear witness to his success, even questioned that it had happened at all? What if she considered it a kind of wish-fulfilling dream on his part?
What if she was right?
The thought was abrupt and jarring. He rejected it instantly-and yet, while he recalled the sensations of the act clearly, the physical details were blurred, as in a memory of something which took place long ago. As in a dream
