Timothy Culver - Power Play

“What do you mean they won’t permit it?”

“I mean they won’t permit it. I mean they will kill him first.”

Harrison said, “That’s the most inane piece of fiction I ever heard in—”

“It is not,” Wellington told him. “I am potentially getting myself in grave trouble by telling you this. The choice is not between my plan and a public institution, the choice is between my plan and Bradford’s dying peacefully in his sleep before he can cause embarrassment to the country.”

Meredith Fanshaw said, “If that were true, don’t you think I’d know it?”

“No. The elected officials of the Federal government haven’t been aware of more than a quarter of the activity of their government since I first went to Washington, and probably not for a good long while before that. Since the First World War, I would imagine. Did you know the CIA was financing all those youth groups and little magazines, or did you hear about it first in the newspapers, along with everybody else?”

“You’re talking about murder, man!”

“There have been a minimum of ten murders so far in this operation, and there may be more. Done by our side, ordered by me. The Chinese agents we replaced at Eustace, what do you suppose happened to them?”

“I assumed they were arrested.”

“A trial? Publicity?”

Joe Holt said, “Wellington, is this on the level?”

“I’m making you all accomplices,” Wellington told them. “I deal in an area where everything is known, we can never get away with euphemisms and little white lies, and I’m dragging you people in with me because it’s the only way I can think of to save my father’s life. This may be my first selfish act.”

Harrison said, “Nobody could get away with a thing like that. They would have — it would have — murder will out!”

“Will it? Joe, I would have gone to you. I would have explained the alternatives. I would have proved to you, Joe, because it would be true, that an honorable death would be better for Bradford than a shameful public moldering in a mental hospital. And you would have agreed with me, Joe, and when I whispered the word euthanasia in your ear, Joe, you would have hated the word, but you would have done it.”

Joe was shaking his head, saying, “I can’t believe you—”

“If not you, there were other ways. Can a doctor kill a patient without anyone knowing, Joe?”

Joe didn’t answer.

Harrison said, “But now that you’ve told us, it can’t work, can it? They wouldn’t dare kill Brad now, not if you told them about us knowing.”

“They already know it,” Wellington said. “This room is bugged, I always take it for granted I’m talking for the microphone. I can do nothing about it, I just accept it. And it won’t stop them. If they decide Bradford has to die for the good of the nation, they will find ways to assure your silence, all eight of you.”

Patricia, regaining her sarcasm, said, “Kill us all, Wellington? I thought you were done with the melodrama.”

“You won’t have to be killed,” he said. “You’re all sane, you can be reasoned with. Bradford can’t be reasoned with, that’s why killing him is the only official answer. But all of you have things short of your life that you don’t want to lose.”

Meredith Fanshaw said, “Even a Senator?”

Wellington looked at him. “Especially a Senator.”

Patricia said, “Because he has so much to lose? I’m not a Senator, Wellington, I have nothing to lose.”

Wellington’s expression didn’t change. “I mention Stockton,” he said.

The flesh around Patricia’s eyes seemed suddenly paler, her eyes more deep-set. She said nothing, and Harrison, frowning at her in perplexity, said, “Stockton? What the hell is Stockton?”

Wellington faced Harrison. “To you,” he said, “I mention the Crocker Citizen’s Bank.”

Harrison blinked, and then stood there with his mouth open.

No one said anything. Wellington studied each of the eight faces, seeing the same fear of him in each, and was both sickened and relieved at that unanimity of expression. He said, “I’ll let you talk it over. I don’t have to be here for your decision, my superior will be listening in. I’ll know what you decide by what orders he gives me. But I would like to say something from a personal point of view. If you force me to kill my father, I will do it, because I long ago gave up the idea that I should have attitudes about the orders I was given to carry out. But through whatever small channels of influence I may have constructed for myself over the last twenty-three years, I will make sure that every one of you regrets it.”

Harrison cried, “You can’t put that kind of responsibility on us!”

Wellington looked at him. “ I can’t?” He turned away and left the room. Downstairs, he said goodbye to Sterling, collected his wife and daughter, and started the long drive back to Washington.

On Monday, the twelfth of November, Bradford came back from his mid-day walk smiling and cheerful and full of his news. It was a cold day, the coldest of the season so far, sunless and crisp under high clouds, and when Evelyn saw him, in a downstairs parlor, his cheeks were so red, his mood so good, his whole manner so boisterous with health and good spirits, that she felt at once a kind of helpless rage at the fact that the façade was a lie, that beneath the apparent robustness was a crippled mind that would never be whole again.

“Action at last!” he said, in a stage whisper, and took her arm, doing a parody of secretiveness, looking over his shoulder, peering this way and that, touching his finger to his lips.

She had no idea what he was talking about. So far as she knew, things were still as they were. Robert had come back from last Thursday’s meeting in Boston full of the plans for the defense of Bradford at the funeral but vague about any plans for Bradford’s future. Apparently the second meeting had been just as fruitless as the first in producing any solution for this impasse.

So what could the action be? When he was finished with his mock-undercover game, Bradford finally told her: “First stop, Paris!”

“What?” The sentence made no sense to her, and at this stage whatever she didn’t understand was potentially a threat.

“Paris,” he said. He was delighted. The last time he’d looked this pleased was when he’d first told her of his plan to run for his old seat in Congress. And if he hadn’t been argued with then, if he’d been permitted that modest dream, would they all be in this position today? She kept telling herself it would have wound up here anyway, he wouldn’t have settled for such a spear-carrier’s role in world events, but none of them could ever now be sure.

But what was this he was talking about? She said, her voice ragged with tension, “I don’t understand. Bradford, for God’s sake don’t play with me!”

The sharpness in her voice, from a nervousness and fright he didn’t know existed, obviously startled him, and he looked at her in some surprise. “Well, of course, Evelyn.” Then, thinking he understood, he smiled gently and rested a hand on her arm. “I know this is a strain for you,” he said. “Sneaking away like cat burglars, committing ourselves to self-exile in such a completely alien land. But to me it’s an adventure, I can’t help that. I can’t help being excited by it, and that keeps me from feeling the strain.”

She remembered now why she loved him, which cushioned her at once from her own feeling of strain, and she returned his smile, saying, “I know that, Bradford. I’m sorry I was irritable. Tell me what they said.”

“We’re going to Paris,” he told her. “They’ve decided it will be easier for me to slip away if I start from there.”