“Of course that’s what I mean.”
“I glanced at them, yes.”
“Glanced at them? Nicholas, this is a serious domestic issue,” Harper said, and he could not quite keep the exasperation out of his voice. “And in less than an hour you have a meeting with Governor Hendricks and Walter Sandcrane and Leo Wade from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”
“Sandcrane? Oh yes, the Indian spokesman. Well, don’t worry about it, Maxwell. I can handle the arbitration. There won’t be any Indian takeover of the Crow reservations in Montana.”
“Cheyenne,” Harper said. “For God’s sake, it’s the Cheyenne who are threatening to take over their reservations.”
“All right, yes, the Cheyenne.” Augustine leaned back, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again. “Do you have any idea how tired I am, Maxwell? How tired I really am?”
“We’re all tired these days,” Harper said. “But that doesn’t excuse a lack of preparation or errors in diplomacy.”
“Meaning Israel or the Indian problem?”
“Both, as a matter of fact.”
“I told you, I’ll handle things.”
Harper was silent.
“But then I’ve got to have a rest,” Augustine said, “even if it’s only for a few days. What I think we’ll do is go out to The Hollows at the end of the week. On Sunday.”
“Again? We were just out there ten days ago-”
“I know that, don’t you think I know that?”
“Nicholas, the media is already accusing you of spending a disproportionate amount of time in California. The Post editorial this morning-”
“To hell with the Post. The Western White House is the only place I can relax, you know that.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call The Hollows the Western White House,” Harper said. “It’s the same phrase Nixon used for San Clemente, as the press has been so fond of pointing out.”
Augustine made an impatient gesture. “It’s my ranch and I’ll call it any damned thing I please. The point is, I need another few days of relaxation, Maxwell; I need them. We’re going to The Hollows on Sunday and that’s all there is to it.”
Harper just looked at him. The Hollows again, he thought. Only a few days this time. Again. This time…
Three
Nicholas Augustine sipped wine from his crystal goblet and looked around the table and wished fervently that he and Claire had decided to dine alone tonight. The evening had begun amiably enough with cocktails in the Green Room, but once they had all come in here to the State Dining Room for dinner, conversation had inevitably gotten around to Israel. It was Briggs who had brought up the subject, over the consomme, and of course Wexford had had to have his say over the salad; only Dougherty and Claire’s secretary, Elizabeth Miller, had remained silent on the topic, although it was apparent how the two of them felt. By the time the chateaubriand was served, silence had mercifully resettled-but Augustine had long since lost his appetite for anything except the wine.
A damned shame too, because he liked chateaubriand. He even liked the State Dining Room, with its restful green colors and its oak paneling. Claire preferred to eat here instead of in the Family Dining Room, which was why they had company for dinner most evenings; it would hardly have been appropriate, she said, for them to dine here alone. But if they had dined alone, damn it, he might have been able to enjoy his meal and to unwind a bit, instead of suffering a fresh onslaught of aggravation.
Why wouldn’t they leave him alone, all of them, for just a little while?
Out of the tail of his eye he saw the huge portrait of Abraham Lincoln that hung over the fireplace, and he smiled wryly. You and me, Abe, he thought, and raised his glass in a small silent toast.
He took another sip of wine and put the goblet down; but as he did so it struck the edge of his plate, making a sharp ringing sound that cut heavily into the silence. Everyone looked at him as though he had rapped for attention-Claire, Austin Briggs, Julius Wexford, Ed Dougherty, Elizabeth Miller, and Wexford’s gray little wife Rachel. Rachel blinked at him like a startled bird; her eyes were as gray as her hair, as her complexion, and the white evening gown she wore only served to complete the colorless study. In contrast, even Elizabeth, an angular brunette in her middle thirties, wearing a dark blue gown and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses that gave her a properly secretarial air, seemed attractive. And Claire, Augustine noted with some pride, looked even more stunning than usual: blonde hair done up with a jeweled comb, china-blue eyes alert and inquisitive, skin so smooth it seemed translucent; gracious and poised as always, although she seemed somewhat subdued tonight. Her dress was blue- green, the same color as her eyes, and it seemed to flow against her when she moved, like seawater.
She said, “Yes, Nicholas?”
Well, Augustine thought, I might as well have my say too; Briggs had the consomme, Wexford had the salad, and I’d better take the chateaubriand before Dougherty does. The evening is ruined anyway. As if there had been no fiveminute lull in the conversation, he said, “Have any of you heard the story about the old Jew, filled with poverty and misfortune, who one day shakes his fist at the heavens and says, ‘God, I know we’re Your chosen people, but will You please, for Your own sake, choose someone else.’ ”
Rachel Wexford made a small choking sound, covered her mouth with a napkin. Wexford scowled and patted her hand. Dougherty and Elizabeth looked at each other and then down at their wine goblets. Briggs opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and finally put a forkful of potato inside it. Claire watched him steadily, neither surprised nor shocked, merely attentive.
Augustine said, “No? Well how about the one where the two old Jews-old enemies who have hated each other for forty years-meet on a railroad platform in Czarist Russia?” He finished his wine. “These two old Jews, you see, hadn’t spoken to each other for years, but finally one of them is unable to hold his silence and he says to the other, ‘Moshe, where are you going on this fine day?’ And Moshe, you understand, is a stubborn man, he doesn’t want to give his old enemy the satisfaction of a quick answer; so he considers for a time and then he says, ‘Well, Schmuel, to tell you the truth, which is more than you deserve, I am going this fine day to the province of Minsk.’ Schmuel looks at him then, shrewdly, and he says, ‘I know what you are, Moshe; you are a liar whose word can never be trusted; you would betray me at every opportunity. You hope to deceive me into thinking you are really going to the province of Pinsk, but I know you so well that the truth is, you are obviously going to Minsk after all.’ ”
Augustine burst out laughing. None of the others joined in, although Claire seemed to smile faintly; they continued to stare at him.
“Do you understand?” Augustine said. “Schmuel says,
‘You think I am to believe you are not going to Minsk, where you say you’re going, but to Pinsk, but I know you lie so you must really be going to Minsk.“’
Silence.
Augustine shrugged. “I believe I’ll have a little more wine,” he said, and motioned to Edmund, the staff waiter, who was standing quietly to one side. Edmund approached and poured more beaujolais into Augustine’s glass.
Briggs said stiffly, “Mr. President, I hope you don’t intend to tell either of those stories publicly…”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Austin, they’re jokes. Wry comments on the nature of the Hebraic mind.”
“And very funny, I’m sure,” Rachel Wexford said.
Augustine thought: Christ, she’s a twit.
Wexford wiped his hands carefully on his napkin, put the napkin down, and took a long, careful sip of water. He was a heavyset man, florid, jowly, wearing a dark suit with a patterned red tie; his face had taken on more color, so that it seemed now to have achieved a hue remarkably similar to that of the beaujolais. The two of them, Julius and Rachel, made quite a pair, Augustine thought. One of them gray, one of them red.
Wexford said, “Well I hardly think either story is funny, Mr. President. They seem more like racial slurs-”
“They are not racial slurs,” Augustine said. “Why does anybody who tells an ethnic joke automatically
