Acts of Mercy by Bill Pronzini, Barry N. Malzberg

I’ve always been very competent at public affairs, haven’t I.
    Always.
    The President relies on me to be competent.
    I’m sure he does.
    So does the country. They wouldn’t want an emotional, incompetent First Lady, would they?
    Not at all.
    No, not at all Elizabeth, what we were discussing this morning that feeling of yours of impending tragedy. Have you discussed it with anyone else?
    No, Mrs. Augustine.
    Do you think anyone else feels it too?
    If they do, I haven’t heard anyone say it.
    Good I’m glad to hear that.
    Mrs. Augustine—may I ask a question?
    Certainly.
    Do you have the same sort of intuition yourself?
    What makes you say that?
    Well, you’ve also been so troubled lately—
    For entirely different reasons. I do not feel that there is anything terribly wrong in the White House. I’m sorry I brought up the subject again. Let’s just drop it, shall we?
    Yes, Mrs. Augustine.

Eleven
     
    It was Maxwell Harper’s custom, on his way home from the White House, to stop for dinner at one of Washington’s better restaurants; on Wednesday evening he chose Le Consulat, in the Embassy Row Hotel. Seated in their elegant dining room, he ordered a dry martini with lemon peel and scanned the menu without finding anything that appealed to him because he was not particularly hungry. He settled finally on a Caesar salad and then sat sipping his drink and looking out at the old-Washington facades of the buildings that lined Massachusetts Avenue.
    He felt bothered and fretful. The day had been filled with a series of worrisome developments, and together they added dimension to the widening pattern of administration crisis. The discussion with Augustine this morning, the President’s apparent agreement with his analysis of the situation and then the abrupt termination of the meeting, as if Augustine understood what was happening around him but refused to accept the fact that it was having a pernicious effect on him. The statistics released by the Department of Labor that unemployment had reached 7.4 percent nationwide. The damned S-1 bill that was now out of committee. The latest Harris poll on the Israeli gaffe. Augustine’s inability to cope with the Cheyenne Indian demands for improvement of their lot, and the growing and militant support of other Amerinds, as evidenced by what had been happening to Vice-President Conroy in the West—all of which pointed toward a nasty domestic incident that would destroy the President’s credibility on the human rights issue. The increasing hostility of the media. The increasing strength of Kineen and his coalition, not only in the primaries but with special-interest groups; there was a still-unconfirmed report circulating that the AFL-CIO was strongly considering support of his candidacy.
    And then there was Claire Augustine.
    With all those other major problems, it was probably illogical that he should be concerned about her; but the fact remained that he had not been able to get her out of his mind since their brief dialogue in the Oval Study. Was she or was she not what she had always seemed to be? Could she also be responsible in some way, directly or indirectly, for the President’s weakening posture? Damn it, what went on inside that striking blonde head of hers?
    The waiter arrived with a silver cart and began preparing the Caesar salad. Harper watched him distractedly, began to eat the same way when the finished salad was placed in front of him.
    The problem was, he thought, Claire Augustine was a total enigma. A completely private person who seemed able to keep her public and personal lives so segregated that nothing of the real woman revealed itself. Except, perhaps, to Augustine, and of course Harper had never discussed her with the President; it was not a liberty even a personal advisor could take with the Chief Executive.
    She was the daughter of a lawyer, now deceased, who had worked for the Dan O’Connell political machine in Albany, New York; she had led a