World War III

McKenna was most things Dan Thorpe had not been. He was young, a widower, not a war hero, liberal-minded and a former governor of a rural western state who had no congressional experience. He was sensitive and quietly intelligent where Thorpe had been simply smart and unbending the way a predatory animal is smart and lethal. But for precisely the reasons that he was unlike Thorpe, he was politically attractive for second slot on the presidential ticket. Thorpe had been — the Rock” and McKenna “the Face” (“the tits and ass element of Thorpe’s traveling political show,” one journalist had crudely dubbed McKenna during the campaign). After the election, Thorpe immediately began restructuring foreign policy with an eye to strengthening alliances, particularly NATO, in a move to check the Soviets. His reinstitution of the grain embargo had taken a heavy toll on the Russians in the wake of their worst grain harvest since the revolution. President Thorpe was born to face down the Russians, supporters had said. For the twenty-one months he lived in the White House, he was an ever-present challenge to their aggressions, and his announcement that he was seriously considering selling arms technology to the Chinese struck a raw Russian nerve. A test of wits and cunning was coming in this nuclear monopoly game, and Thorpe was the man to have on your side. Everybody knew that.

Nobody dreamed he would die, of course. Now McKenna was president. It v* as a lousy trick, McKenna thought, him dying like that.

A short man hurried into the room. Wayne Kimball was always in a hurry. He had graduated first in his law class at Princeton in 1968, delivered the valedictory address and had been running ever since. He was an immaculate dresser with a decided preference for gray pin-striped suits which, he thought, befitted his station as White House chief of staff.

“Breakfast, Mr. President. Richard Hickman’s already started in the study. If you want anything before he consumes it all, you’d better move your ass.” Kimball took the coffee cup and saucer and set them on the stack of papers.

“That was my breakfast, Wayne.”

“Up, please. Where’s your jacket?”

McKenna pointed it out on the back of a chair. Kimball retrieved it and helped the president into the sleeves. “You’re the chief of staff, Wayne, not a valet.”

“I get no respect. C’mon. It’s nine O’clock and—” Kimball stopped as McKenna turned toward him, staring at the president’s tie. “Jesus Christ! Where did you shoot that thing?” McKenna laughed. “Like it? Judge Stevenson picked it out.”

“Out of what?” Kimball shook his head. “That lady may be a brilliant jurist and”—he shrugged—”and whatever else, but she hasn’t got the slightest appreciation of what a presidential image should be.”

“I guess that comes under the heading of separation of powers.”

“Jokes? Jokes I get the first thing in the morning?”

McKenna buttoned his jacket. “So, what’s on today? Soft, I hope.”

“None.” Kimball checked through a small leather-bound appointment book. “Briefing in twenty minutes, the regulars.”

“Who’s priority?”

“Farber, National Security.”

“Jules Farber,” McKenna said wearily. “I seem to spend my life with Jules Farber.”

“Dick Hickman for breakfast,” Kimball read from the notebook.

“And?”

“I suspect he wants you to announce.”

“Too soon.”

“Dick doesn’t think so.”

“Dick Hickman is a born campaign manager. That’s the way he has to think. Luckily, he doesn’t make the decisions. He’d have had me announcing the day Thorpe died, preferably the moment after I was sworn in.”

“He thinks the great man is still president, you know. You’re just sort of renting space until he returns.”

“A lot of people have the same idea. When a president dies in office, especially someone like Dan Thorpe, people feel a terrifying loss, and they resent the poor schmuck who happens to be vice-president.”

“You’re not resented.”

McKenna smiled. “I’d rather you’d said I wasn’t a schmuck.” He nodded at the notebook. “What else?”

“The devil’s bitch at nine fifteen.”

“Translate that, please.”

“Dorothy Longworth. You promised her an interview and now it’s time to pay up.”

“It won’t be that bad. She may be a vitriolic bitch, but she’s a polite vitriolic bitch. Dick doesn’t know she’s here, I hope. He’d have a go at her skinny neck if he did.”

“No, she’s having coffee in the library. Stealing us blind, probably.”

“Fine. Next?”

“Ad hoc committees on inflation.”

“What do you bet they come in smiling to cover their long faces. ‘The consumer price index,’ Secretary Bridges will say. Though it went up only two and a half percent last month, we have every reason to hope…’ etcetera ad infinitum.”

“You inherited inflation. You didn’t invent it.”

“The poor bastard who ten years ago thought he had a piece of the action has only got a bigger piece of the promise today. Inflation is running twenty percent. Remedy — a meeting. Alternative energy legislation is choking to death in… how many committees?”

“Eight in the Senate, twelve in the House.”