turned and started over to it. Augustine hurried out into the hall and shut that door sharply behind him.
When he came into the master bedroom, the mirror over Claire’s dressing table gave him an immediate and unwanted image of himself. Face composed, carriage erect, hands steady now. But his eyes made a lie of the calm exterior; unlike Claire’s, they were naked-they revealed exactly what he was feeling, they told the absolute truth.
He put his back to the mirror, took off his jacket and tie and opened the collar of his shirt. Then he went into the bathroom and washed his face in cold water, patted it dry with a towel. In the bedroom again he sat on the rough Indian blanket that covered the big brass bed, to wait for Claire.
And sitting there he thought: Did I handle it wrong? Should I have waited until we were back in Washington? Should I have taken questions out there? No-I did it the only way I could. It’s the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life, but I did it and it’s finished.
Finished.
There was a dampness in his eyes now and he felt like weeping. But he did not, would not. Any more than he had been able to go all the way and resign, give in to the goddamn National Committee and turn the country over to Conroy for the next seven months. He had been a decent President, he had done nothing to be ashamed of; resignation was shame, tears were shame-admissions of guilt or folly or weakness.
They had taken everything else from him but he would not let the bastards have his soul.
Bill Pronzini Barry N. Malzberg
Acts of Mercy
Eleven
We cannot believe it. We are confused, stunned by what we have just heard the President say to the assembled reporters-so confused and so stunned that we feel our very concealment from me, the singular self, to be threatened. The conspirators have won; there are too many of them, their combined efforts were too great for us alone to overcome. They have insidiously drained Nicholas Augustine’s will to fight, they have brought him down, they have beaten him into submission. He is lost and we are lost with him.
Or is he?
Or are we?
What if it is not too late, even now, to save him? The rest of the plotters could still be exterminated, the conspiracy could still be crushed. And the President would then be free to rescind his manipulated decision to withdraw; he is not bound by it, after all, not yet.
Yes. Yes! We must not abandon hope, nor abandon our mission. We must be strong. We must rip the tendrils of pain and confusion and defeat-weapons of the conspirators-from our mind, cement the fusion of our purpose. It is not too late.
We are not sure of how many other conspirators there are, or of their identities. But we have suspicions about at least one, and those suspicions are enough. No time now for gathering more evidence; time now only to act, time now only for the giving of mercy to the besieged President. Act and mercy. Act of mercy.
Today, tonight, before this day is done, a third traitor must die.
Twelve
As soon as the President left the conference room, Harper pushed his way through the milling reporters and went straight out to the garage barns and commandeered one of the Cadillacs. Everything about The Hollows had become unbearable now; unless he got away from there, if only for a little while, it seemed as though he would suffocate.
He drove through the main gate and along the access road at a steady fifty miles an hour. There was an impulse in him to drive faster, drive recklessly, but it was checked by his innate caution and by the looming presence of trees and mountains. Two cars jammed with press people passed him; he paid no attention to them, kept his eyes locked on the roadway.
Inside him there was a cold gray void: no bitterness, no resentment, no anger, nothing at all. He had known on an intellectual level since yesterday morning that the end was near, but it was like knowing you had a terminal illness. You weren’t dead yet and as long as you were alive there was that tiny spark of hope for a miraculous recovery. But now, now it was over; the end had come at last. Just like that, with one incredible, pathetic statement delivered by an insipid old fool. Career, future, everything meaningfuldead.
Harper took the Cadillac across the western ridge, down into the first valley past the station and the railroad tracks and the Presidential Special like a waiting funeral train, onto a blacktopped country road and finally into the village of Greenspur. After that there were other country roads, a four-lane state highway that followed the course of the Yurok River, still another county road, a string of lumber mills, two more villages. And always the oppressive wilderness of trees and mountains and valleys, green and brown, green and brown, shadowed and shining in the warm May sunlight…
It became as unbearable after a while as The Hollows. What now? he thought dully. Drive all the way to Washington? Ridiculous. Drive several hundred miles to San Francisco and then take a commercial airline to the Capital? Repellent. There was nothing for him in Washington anyway, not now; there was nothing anywhere. But he did not want to go back to The Hollows either. He did not want to see Augustine, or talk to him, or see and talk to anybody else Except Claire?
No. Especially not her. Why should he want to see her? But the thought stayed with him, and because he was tired of driving and sick of the open countryside, because he had to go somewhere and he had no place to go, he turned the car around finally and started back. Got lost twice, but did not stop to ask directions. Found his way to The Hollows by trial and error, by instinct-he didn’t need anyone, he would never trust anyone again.
It was almost five o’clock when he reached the front gate and was admitted to the ranch complex. He drove to the garage barns, left the Cadillac there, and without conscious choice found himself walking straight across toward the main house. I don’t want to see her, he thought-and came around a curve in one of the south-garden paths and saw her.
He stopped instantly. Unaware of him, she was bending over a bed of flowers, clipping a bouquet of yellow- andpurple lilies with a pair of shears. She wore a blue bandanna around her hair, and gardening clothes, and there was a smudge of dirt on one cheek. Beautiful, Harper thought. His hands were moist. She’s the most beautiful woman in the world.
“Mrs. Augustine,” he said. “Claire.”
She came erect in a jerky motion, shaded her eyes against the sunglare. “What is it, Maxwell?” Cold voice, distant, always so distant and unknowable.
“Where is the President?” he asked.
“Resting.”
“Yes, of course. After what he did this morning he needs all the rest he can get.”
She moistened her lips: little pink tongue glistening, flicking sensually at soft pink lips. “He did what had to be done,” she said.
“Did he?”
“You know he did.”
“I don’t know anything,” Harper said. “But I can see how delighted you are. If it had been up to you, you’d have had him resign, wouldn’t you.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Why? What motivates you?”
“Nicholas motivates me.”
“That’s all? Just Nicholas?”
Uneasiness had crept into her eyes. “Why are you talking to me like this, Maxwell? What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing is the matter with me,” he said, and thought: Why am I talking like this? I don’t have any right to say these things. Control, control-but that was gone too and he did not seem to care. And the words kept coming
