Line of Succession Read online

  He probably was wrong. But it was a possibility.

  The timing was what suggested it. Stratten’s group had arrived in Washington about a week ago; the reinforcements from Los Angeles had arrived a few days later. When you moved into an area and you had it in mind to do violence, you didn’t spend any longer than you had to setting things up. So whatever they planned to do, they planned to do it soon.

  Killing Barbara Norris had been an act of desperation; if they’d had sufficient time they’d have done it more dramatically or more quietly. One or the other. The job they’d done on Norris was the kind of thing you did when you didn’t have time to do it better. If the vicious mutilation had been intended as a message then its delivery had been hasty: with sufficient time they’d have planted the body where it would have attracted more attention. The front step of a newspaper building or the side door to a police station or the foot of the Lincoln Memorial.

  So they were in a very big hurry now. That meant it was probably on for today.

  They had a sense of dramatics. You could tell that by the arrogant set of Stratten’s head in the photo, if not by what they had done to Norris. So it was a good bet their master plan would involve something public, something big, something not merely violent but catastrophic. Because of the odds you had to rule out the probability of an attempt on the President’s life. The President only had seventeen days left in office: he hardly made a priority target.

  What was left? The President-elect was junketing in Europe. They weren’t likely to go to all this trouble merely to plant bombs in the Pentagon or the Library of Congress; Stratten didn’t look the sort who would take much satisfaction from the anonymous bombing of symbolic buildings.

  So it wasn’t far fetched and it wasn’t even unlikely that they planned to set off bombs in the Capitol Building during the hour when the new Congress was being sworn in.

  11:50 A.M. EST The Vice-President-elect was about to turn and enter the Capitol when he felt weight beside him and looked around to see Senator Fitzroy Grant at his elbow. Grant gave him the benediction of his lifted cigar and extended his hand, and they shook hands formally because they were in public. The Senate Minority Leader said, “Too bad about those young people down there with their picket signs. Spoils a flavorful day, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Fitz. I think if they weren’t down there we’d miss them. You get so used to them.”

  Fitzroy Grant had a dewlappy face and bassett eyes set in deep weathered folds; a sly figure, full of insinuation and Edwardian gallantry; an engaging grin and the vanity of polished shoes and good clothes and cared-for hands. He ran a palm over his head carefully, not dislodging the neat wave in his senatorially white hair and waved genially to a passerby. When Ethridge glanced that way he saw that the passerby was Senator Wendell Hollander of Kentucky, elderly and bowlegged, coming up the steps like a crab. Hollander was puffing; he didn’t look at all well, but then he hadn’t looked well in the eighteen years Ethridge had known him. Hollander was the picture of the seedy, rheumy, larcenous and crafty Southern politician, but of course that was only the surface stereotype perpetuated by the press: underneath Hollander was as sober as a Jersey City judge and as gentle as a school of piranha.

  Hollander came forward busily disposing the muscles of his face toward lines indicative of pleasure. He was a little deaf and shouted. “Mr. Vice-President-elect, suh! Mr. Senator!”

  “Hello Wendy.” Ethridge almost managed to make his voice sound cordial. There was the ritual of handshaking. Ethridge hated Wendell Hollander and he was certain Hollander hated him, but neither would ever admit it; their hostilities were covered by a warm surface pleasantness which if anything had intensified since the election because they were now members not only of opposite parties but of separate branches of the government. Wendell Hollander was Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and President pro tern of the Senate, and it was unquestioned that the club would reconfirm him in both posts today. Hollander’s seniority was impeccable; he had sat in the Senate since 1937.

  Hollander extracted a gold chain from his vest pocket, consulted the snap-lid gold watch, made a loud remark about not wanting to be late, and crabbed his way into the Capitol building. Fitzroy Grant’s eyebrows cocked upward in amusement and Ethridge said, “If there was ever an unimpeachable argument for demolishing the seniority system, Wendy is it.”

  “You can put that in the bank,” Grant said. “I’ve spent twenty years trying to argue with him and you just can’t do it. He only raises his voice and talks right through you. Nobody can match Wendy’s inane oversimplifications and half-truths and downright absurdities. Now and then I get in a word and one-up him, and he rears back on his dignity and leaves the room.”

  “He’s a dangerous man, Fitz. We can’t afford to go on condoning these old crackerbarrel fossils who see Communists in every phone booth and want to make Asia into a desert.”

  “Well I suppose. But he’s hard to dislodge. The man’s a hero in those regions where it’s known as fact that the nation is in the final stages of Communist subversion.”

  “Funny,” Ethridge murmured, “I seem to remember you expressing the same sentiments back around the time of Joe McCarthy.”

  It made Senator Grant smile. “I thought the campaign was over, Mr. Vice-President—or would you like to compare voting records?”

  “Mr. Minority Leader,” Ethridge said with a feeling of happy comfort, “I believe it’s time we went inside and attended the formalities.” And the two old friends turned to enter the Capitol.

  As they did, a big yellow-haired man in a coffee-stained topcoat intercepted Ethridge’s Secret Service detail and began to talk swiftly into Agent Pickett’s ear.

  Ethridge was about to walk past the men when Agent Pickett took a sidewise pace which courteously barred his path. “Excuse me sir. This is Mr. Lime from our headquarters.”

  The big blond man nodded. “Mr. Vice-President.” A cigarette hung in the corner of Lime’s wide flexible mouth. He had an amiable bulldog face and a cheap haircut and big hard violent hands.

  Lime said, “I don’t mean to cause alarm——”

  “But you’re about to,” Ethridge said, smiling to take the edge off it. “Whenever a man starts out by saying that it means he’s about to kick you in the guts.”

  It made Lime smile a little before he said, “These things almost always come to nothing. But you need to be advised—we think it’s possible a radical group plans to bomb the Capitol.”

  “When?”

  He saw Lime’s eyes narrow with quick respectful scrutiny and it wasn’t hard to tell why. Ethridge had brushed past all the obvious and commonplace reactions—What? Bomb the Capitol? Why that’s outrageous! You can’t let them get away with that! Who are they? What makes you think anything like that’s afoot! No: “When?”

  Lime said in answer, “We’ve got no hard information. But if they do it at all they’d be likely to do it with both houses in session.”

  “In other words right now?”

  “It’s possible,” Lime conceded.

  “Do you want to clear the building?”

  He saw Lime hesitate. Ethridge said, “Of course I have no way to advise you—I don’t know how serious the threat is.”

  “That’s the trouble,” Lime admitted. “We don’t know that there’s any threat at all.”

  “Have you got your people inside searching?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I assume you don’t suspect any members of Congress of being a party to whatever it is you suspect?”

  “No. It appears to be a small group of radicals.”

  “Well they won’t get onto the floor of either chamber then. They’ll be in the visitors’ gallery if they’re in the chambers at all, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your men are searching there? Posting themselves there to prevent anyone from throwing things?”

  “As much as possible, yes.”r />
  “Then I think we’d better proceed with things on schedule,” Ethridge said. He looked at his watch: eleven fifty-seven. “I don’t mean to seem callous but we’ve been bombed before. It’s never done much injury or damage. The Constitution requires that this Congress convene at noon today, and unless you have something very strong to go on, I don’t think we should attempt to evacuate the Capitol.”

  Agent Pickett, always conscientious, said in his Alabama drawl, “That’s what Mr. Lime said to me, sir, but for the sake of your safety I think I ought to recommend that you not go inside until we’ve checked it out.”

  “That may take an hour,” Ethridge said. “They’ll be starting the proceedings in two minutes’ time.”

  “Yes sir,” Pickett said. “I still think it might be a good idea for you to wait, sir.”

  Lime said, “We’ll have to leave that to you,” and turned to hurry into the building.

  Ethridge looked around. Fitzroy Grant had been buttonholed by someone else and had already disappeared inside. Ethridge touched Ted Pickett’s sieve. “Come on, then, I don’t want to be late,” and walked in under the high doorway.

  12:05 P.M. EST The Washington press corps numbered more than two thousand accredited correspondents from the United States and thirty foreign nations. Armed with press cards which Stratten had obtained from a source he hadn’t divulged, Bob Walberg and his sister and three others had gained entry to the Capitol and its two press galleries half an hour before. It had gone just as smoothly as Stratten had predicted. Yesterday the Walbergs and the others had shaved their beards and trimmed their hair and fitted themselves into the Establishment clothes they were now wearing; Stratten had filled their wallets with all manner of false ID.

  And Stratten had briefed them thoroughly. The Capitol had been bombed twice before. In 1915 a German instructor from Cornell University had protested American arms sales to the Allies by setting off an explosive device in the Senate reception room; it hadn’t done much damage. In 1970 radicals had exploded a bomb in the Senate wing—a powerful explosive planted in a men’s lavatory on the ground floor. Only one bomb, but it had damaged seven rooms: knocked down walls and blown doors off their hinges. The plastic explosive Bob Walberg carried was considerably more potent than that—and his companions carried four more like his. And this time it was for real: the 1970 explosion had gone off in the small hours of the morning when there had been almost no one in the building. Today Congress was in session and Stratten had both wings covered: three in the House chamber, two in the Senate. It was going to do one hell of a job on the Establishment.

  Right on, Bob Walberg thought. Reporters milled around him, getting in and out of seats, squeezing along the aisles of the press gallery. It was a cinch to spot the Secret Service agents in their business suits, giving everybody the eye. He kept a straight face while he lifted the briefcase onto his lap and snapped it open. He knew the guards were watching his movements but they had poked through the briefcase down at the door before they’d admitted him and they hadn’t found the bomb then so they weren’t going to spot it now. Nobody was going to find it until it was too late.

  Along the back row of the press gallery stood a few men in uniform but Stratten had said not to worry about them. They were the Capitol Police Force and most of them were patronage appointees—students, part-timers.

  He took a notebook and pencil out of the case and snapped the case shut. As he did so he glanced at his watch: ten past noon. The proceedings were late getting started, but then it was always like that. As he set the briefcase down under the seat between his ankles he touched the rivet under the brass catch to start the time mechanism. It could always be stopped—that was the advantage of using a stopwatch for a time device. But it was ticking now and Bob Walberg knew he had thirty minutes to get away and his nostrils dilated and he began to sweat.

  The galleries were settling down. At the far end of the press gallery he saw Sandra, looking professional with a pad in her lap and a pencil poised over it.

  Below him Congressmen were getting settled in their semicircular rows of chairs. The Speaker of the House, Milton Luke, emerged from a door behind the Speaker’s rostrum. The Doorkeeper was ushering in dignitaries, bringing them down the center aisle and seating them. Bob Walberg’s seat was in the third row of the press gallery, above the rostrum and a few yards to its left; he judged the distance critically and decided the bomb in his case would take out a good part of the left-hand section of Representatives’ seats.

  Somebody was tapping a microphone, blowing into it to test it; the sounds were echoing over the loudspeakers. The Chaplain of the House was at the rostrum and Bob Walberg heard his aged voice crackle over the PA system: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.…” And Bob Walberg thought automatically Psalms 33:12 and had a moment’s image of Sabbath School at Temple in Culver City, the rabbi talking in gentle reasonable words about the goodness of God and men. It made him remember his Bar Mitzvah and the Schwinn bicycle his father had given him. Stupid middle-class phony liberal with his smelly delicatessen and his NAACP contributions and his sickening hypocrisy.

  “Almighty God,” the Chaplain intoned, “we pause at the beginning of this Ninety-fifth Congress to thank Thee for Thy providential care over us.…”

  The summer of Bob Walberg’s Bar Mitzvah they had had the riot in Watts and he remembered his father loading the shotgun: Those bastards come down my street we’ll see what happens, hey? His father with the socialist platitudes and the color TV that was the first in the neighborhood, the slave wages he paid the black and Mexican workers who mowed his lawns and cleaned out the deli and kept house for the Walbergs while the Walbergs spent weekends in Las Vegas and sent Bob and Sandra to camps and schools for middle-class problem children.

  “… Thy wisdom and Thy grace unto this new Congress as we climb this holy hill of our nation’s life and pray that Thou endow all those who serve Thee in this place with nobility of spirit and character. In the Redeemer’s name we pray. Amen.”

  The Reverend Mosley stepped down and the Clerk of the House approached the microphone. Bob Walberg looked at his watch.

  “Representatives-elect to the Ninety-fifth Congress, this is the day fixed by the Twentieth Amendment of the Constitution and Public Law nine-four-dash-six-four-three of the Ninety-fourth Congress for the meeting of the Ninety-fifth Congress of the United States. As the law directs, the Clerk of the House has prepared the official roll of the Representatives-elect. Credentials for the four hundred and thirty-five districts to be represented in the Ninety-fifth Congress have been received, and are now on file with the Clerk of the Ninety-fourth Congress.…”

  It was no good telling him what a hypocritical old klutz he was. He wouldn’t know the truth if it kicked him in the teeth. Sending contributions to Israel and keeping his accounts in a bank that did business with South Africa and you just couldn’t make him see.

  “The reading clerk will call the roll.”

  “The state of Alabama. Mr. Price…”

  Sixteen past noon. Another eight or ten minutes, and out. The thing was not to look like you were in a hurry. Ask the guard on the way out where the men’s room is.

  “The state of Mississippi. Mr. Bailey…”

  He could almost feel it ticking between his ankles. His watch: twelve-nineteen. It was due to go off at twelve-forty; all of them were. Get out at twelve-twenty-five, he thought. That’ll give me fifteen minutes to get clear. Linc will have the car ready by the corner of the New Senate Office Building, and Darleen’s got the Oldsmobile parked up on Tennessee Avenue so we can make the swap: if some idiot gets the license number of the first car we’ll still be away clean. By the time they start setting up roadblocks we’ll be on our way through Baltimore, heading for the Jersey Turnpike.

  Martyrs are cheap, Stratten had drummed into them. Any stupid head can be a martyr. We’ve got to prove you can do it and get away with it. That’s the whole point, isn’t it. Not just that you ca
n attack the Establishment, but that the Establishment’s powerless to do a thing about it.

  The bird next to Bob Walberg was giving him an odd glance. Bob straightened his face and pretended to jot a shorthand note in the pad on his knee.

  “The roll call discloses that four hundred and twenty-seven Representatives-elect have answered to their names. A quorum is present. Now the next order of business is the election of a Speaker of the House of Representatives for the Ninety-fifth Congress. Nominations are now in order.… The chair recognizes Mr. Breckenyear of Louisiana.”

  “Mr. Clerk, as chairman of the Democratic caucus, I am directed by the unanimous vote of that caucus to present for re-election to the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Ninety-fifth Congress the name of the Honorable Milton C. Luke, a Representative-elect from the State of Connecticut.”

  “The chair recognizes Mr. Wood of California.”

  “Mr. Clerk, as chairman of the Republican conference and by authority, direction, and unanimous vote of that conference, I nominate for Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Ninety-fifth Congress the Honorable Philip Krayle, a Representative-elect from the State of New York.”

  “The Honorable Milton C. Luke, a Representative-elect from the State of Connecticut, and the Honorable Philip Krayle, a Representative-elect from the State of New York, have been placed in nomination. Are there further nominations? … There being no further nominations, the Clerk will appoint tellers. The Clerk appoints the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Block, the gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Westlake, the gentlewoman from California, Mrs. Ludlum, and the gentlewoman from Vermont, Mrs. Morrison. Tellers will come forward and take their seats at the desk in front of the Speaker’s rostrum. The roll will now be called, and those responding to their names will indicate by surname the nominee of their choice—Luke or Krayle. The reading clerk will now call the roll.”

  “The State of Alabama. Mr. Price.…”

  Bob Walberg looked at his watch and looked up across the gallery. Sandra was watching him.