Line of Succession by Brian Garfield

for weeks about that, but each time with laughter.
    â€œPresident Brewster.”
    He looked up. It was McNeely, holding the phone out toward him. Fairlie hadn’t heard it ring. At least McNeely hadn’t said, “It’s the pisspot Napoleon.”
    He took the receiver from McNeely and said into the mouthpiece, “Fairlie here.”
    â€œHold on please, Mr. Fairlie.” Brewster’s secretary.
    Now the President came on the line. “Cliff.”
    â€œHello Mr. President.”
    â€œThanks for waiting.” An unnecessary courtesy: where would Fairlie have gone? Howard Brewster’s flat Oregon twang sounded very tired: “Bill Satterthwaite’s just talked to them over at Walter Reed. Old Dex Ethridge is fine, just fine.”
    â€œThey’re releasing him, then?”
    â€œNo, they want to hang onto him for a day or so, run him through that damned battery of tests they like to do.” He could almost hear the President shudder over the six-thousand-mile telephone wire. “But there’s nothing wrong with Dex, he’s fine and dandy. I always said it’d take more than a whap on the head to do any damage to a Republican.”
    Fairlie said, “It’s that elephant hide we all wear.”
    There followed Brewster’s energetic bark of laughter and then a ritual clearing of throat, and Brewster said in his matter-of-fact voice, “Cliff, I’m going to talk to the people tonight. It’ll be pretty late your time but I’d appreciate it a whole lot if you’d hold off on making any kind of statement until after I’ve made mine.”
    â€œOf course, Mr. President.”
    â€œAnd then I’d be truly obliged if you’d step out and back me up. We need to have a pretty good show of solidarity on this thing.”
    â€œI can see that,” Fairlie said—cautious, not wanting to commit himself to a blank-check promise. “Do you mind if I ask what the substance of it will be?”
    â€œDon’t mind a bit. “Brewster dropped into his man-to-man confidential voice:
    â€œI’m going to talk tough, Cliff. Very tough. There’s a lot of screwballs out there with loud voices and I don’t think we can afford to give them time to start broadcasting conspiracy alarms and sniping at us the way they did when JFK was shot. There’s a risk of panic here, and I mean to head it off.”
    â€œBy doing what, Mr. President?’’ Fairlie felt the fine hairs prickle at the back of his neck.
    â€œWe’ve just had an emergency meeting of the National Security Council together with various interested parties—the Speaker, some others. I’m declaring a state of national emergency, Cliff.”
    After a moment Fairlie said, “I thought you’d captured the bombers.”
    â€œWell, we’ve got some pretty damn fast T-men and thank God for them. They nailed those degenerate savages before they’d got two blocks from the Hill.”
    â€œThen what emergency are we talking about?”
    â€œThere’s some others mixed up in this thing—five or six that didn’t get caught, maybe more.”
    â€œYou know that for a fact?”
    â€œYes. I do. We do know there were more people involved in this than we actually caught at the scene.”
    â€œYou’re declaring a national emergency mainly to hunt down a handful of co-conspirators?”
    â€œWell, we don’t know how many they are, but that’s beside the point, Cliff. The thing is, we’ve been rocked by this. Warshington’s out of kilter. Now God knows how many other groups of vicious animals we’ve got out there in the woodwork—suppose they decide it’s time to jump on the bandwagon and whip up this big revolution they’re always yelling about? What if they get the violence stirred up until we’ve got riots and snipers and bombs crawling out from under rocks in every city and