Line of Succession by Brian Garfield Page B

there would be one thing worse than killing these savages, and that would be not killing them.”
    â€œI haven’t disputed that part of it, Mr. President.”
    â€œCliff, I need your support on this. You know that.” The President breathed hard into the phone. “The Establishment protects us, Cliff. We’re obliged to protect it.”
    â€œI think a roundup at this point would have a terrible effect on the country. It could only be interpreted as the overreaction of a government in panic.”
    â€œNot at all. It would demonstrate our self-respect. To ourselves and to the rest of the world. That’s damned important right now. How can any society expect to hold together without self-respect? It’s a matter of showing muscle, Cliff, and that’s something we’ve been too reluctant to do.”
    â€œMaybe with good reason. I think a roundup right now would give the radicals exactly the kind of provocation they want. Oh, keep surveillance on the really suspicious ones of course, but let them alone. Mr. President, the radicals have been trying for years to goad the Government into violence. If we start herding them into camps it’ll be exactly what they’ve been waiting for—there’ll be outraged cries of police state and fascist suppression and we can’t afford that now.”
    â€œCliff, I think you’re more concerned about their outraged cries than you are about their bombs.”
    â€œI haven’t heard of any bombs since the Capitol, Mr. President. There doesn’t seem to be any chain reaction.”
    â€œThey’ve hardly had time yet, have they.” The President was getting curt now; he had been long enough in power to get out of the habit of conciliatory argument.
    â€œI’d like to give it a little time, Mr. President. If we see a chain reaction starting in the next day or two—if the snipers and bombers start coming out from under those rocks you mentioned—then I’ll cooperate with you right up to the hilt. But if we don’t see any sign of that kind of trouble then I’m afraid I’m going to have to fight you on this.”
    An attenuated silence, and Fairlie could all but see Brewster’s agonized face. Finally the President said in a lower tone than he had used before, “I’ll have to get back to you, Cliff. I’ll have to consult with my people. If I can’t get back to you before my broadcast I suppose you’ll get my answer from that. If we decide we must go ahead with the program as I’ve outlined it to you, then you’ll do as you see fit, I guess, but I’d like to remind you this is a damned precarious time for all of us and there’s nothing we need quite so badly right now as a show of undivided solidarity.”
    â€œI’m very aware of that, Mr. President.”
    The courteous goodbyes were distant and chilled. Fairlie sat by the telephone and brooded at it. He realized that if he were in Washington today it would be much harder for him not to be swept up in the urgent sense of horror and the unreasoning emotional demand for reactive vengeance.
    It had been up to him to support Brewster, but his refusal reversed their positions. Brewster was the Chief Executive and had the right to make final decisions but only for the next sixteen days, after which the decisions would be Fairlie’s, and Brewster had to worry about that now because this decision wasn’t the kind he could present to his successor as a fait accompli. If Brewster arrested thousands of people and Fairlie quickly turned them loose, it could give Brewster and his party a terrible black eye; at the same time it could put a libertarian luster on Fairlie’s administration—perhaps not enough to convince the radicals that Fairlie could be trusted, but certainly enough to persuade them to postpone any full-scale anti-Fairlie warfare for an interim while they sat back and watched to see