Benchley, Peter - Novel 06
Read Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 Online
Authors: Q Clearance (v2.0)
Q Clearance
for Wendy
—
for a
thousand reasons^ of which she knows but one —
“On your knees,
America
!''
No. Too mandatory. Too . . . military. A
presidential proclamation should be forceful yet amiable, cooperative rather
than coercive. Not dictatorial. Rule #1 in a democracy: Don't piss off the
people.
Timothy Bumham yanked the piece of paper out
of his typewriter, crumpled it and aimed it at the wastebasket, then began
again.
" 'In God We Trust' has been a watchword
for Americans since our forefathers. ..."
No. Too wordy, too mealymouthed, too
avuncular. Not . . . presidential. If the President wants the citizens to pray,
he should tell them to pray.
But what about that piece of parchment called
the Constitution? It's none of the President's business who prays when, how or
to whom. The law says he has to keep his sticky fingers off religion.
So why are we bothering with a National Day of
Prayer? Burnham was damned if he knew. Why bother with proclamations, period?
Nobody ever reads them, let alone heeds them. The newspapers print them between
the obituaries and the neuter-your-pet notices.
Burnham wadded his second attempt into a tight
paper ball and lofted a blind hook shot that missed the wastebasket by four
feet. Clearly, presidential proclamations existed for the sole purpose of
giving presidential speechwriters colitis. He leaned back in his chair and put
his feet on his desk and gazed out the window. Two limousine drivers were
pitching pennies against the curb by the West Basement entrance to the White
House.
The intercom on his telephone buzzed.
"Yup?"
"Mr. Burnham, there's a Mr. Renfro to see
you. From DOE."
Burnham sat up, confused. "He's here?”
Nobody ever came to see the President's
writers. People phoned them or sent them information, but when face-to-face
meetings were called for, it was the writers who were summoned to the
policymakers. Writers were, after all, tools, to be paid no more homage than an
artist accords his brush or a carpenter his screwdriver.
"What's he want?"
"He won't say. He assures me it's
important enough for me to interrupt you."
Burnham imagined Dyanna defiantly tilting her
pert little nose and her sharp little chin up at the peremptory Mr. Renfro,
hoping for license to tell him to bugger off back to his warren in the
Department of Energy.
However, Burnham was eager for any diversion
from his task of refereeing the struggle between Church and State, and he was
curious, so he said, "Send him in." He swung his feet to the floor
and rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter and faced the keys with what he
hoped was an air of creativity. As the door to his office opened, he typed a
garble of letters, then looked up as if resenting the interruption. "What
can I do for you?"
"My name is Renfro.
Preston
T. Renfro. I'm with DOE." Renfro
launched what should have been a simple statement with the gravity of a formal
announcement.
How does he want me to react? Burnham
wondered. Tachycardia? A frisson of delight? For, the appearance of the man
denied the authority of the voice.
Preston T. Renfro was a gray-looking person.
He conveyed neither rank nor ruthlessness nor intellect nor any of the several
other manifestations of power. He seemed to lack even vanity, for he was bald
in a pattern that would have nicely accepted a hairpiece. He wore no jewelry
except an inexpensive digital watch. His suit, shirt, tie and shoes were
boringly compatible. He probably did some kind of solitary exercise two or
three times a week, for his skin fit him well and he carried no obvious
blubber. His face had no angles, no comers. It was roundish, a face that was
unravaged by booze or tragedy or emotional tumult. He might have been a
salesman, an insurance executive, a banker, a Bulgarian bureaucrat— one of
those nondescript types who carries a poison-tipped umbrella with which to
assassinate exiled dissidents on the Quai des Grands Augustins. Or he might be
what he said he was, a something-or-other with the Federal Department of
Energy.
"You can leave it open," Burnham
said as Renfro shut the door behind him. "I have no secrets."
Renfro hesitated, assessing Burnham before he
said, "Yes you do, Mr. Burnham. As of today, you do."
A voice in Burnham's head said, Uh-oh: This
guy is beginning to sound like a refugee from a rubber room.
He wondered if Dyanna had thought to ask to
see Renfro's ID. He said, "What do you do for DOE?"
"Work for them." Renfro took a
wallet from his hip pocket and flashed a DOE pass at Burnham. It looked
genuine. "Like you do."
"I see." Burnham recognized the
gambit of a routine power game. He decided to trump. "The thing is, I
don't work for DOE. I work for the President."
"Let's not split hairs." Unbidden,
Renfro sat in one of the two chairs before Burnham's desk, laid his briefcase
across his knees and folded his hands on top of it. "You may work in the
White House complex, but you're employed by DOE. You're paid by DOE, you're
insured by DOE, and after the FBI finished with you, you had to be cleared by
DOE."
"Could DOE fire me?"
Renfro paused. "A good question. I don't
know."
Turkey
, Burnham thought. You know as well as I do
that DOE can't touch me. The President had me hired, and he could have me
fired, but without a direct order from the President DOE has no choice but to
pay me, insure me and carry me on its rolls as a high-level staff member
detailed to the White House.
None of the President's writers worked for the
White House, not technically. They weren't on the White House staff. In fact,
almost everybody Burnham knew who worked in the White House didn't work for the
White House: They all worked for some other agency or department or bureau.
They had to. Congress authorized a budget for
the White House that accommodated 314 employees. The truth was that the great
lumbering beast known as the Executive Office of the President employed 1,520
human beings, all of whom had to be paid and insured by somebody. Every President
threatened to cut the White House budget. Most Presidents did make cosmetic
cuts. But all Presidents quietly restored those cuts by fishing in the federal
bureaucracy for slots to fill wit* their own people, who, thenceforth, never
set foot inside the department that paid them, never met their nominal boss
never performed a single function related to their "job
descriptions."
Burnham's friend McGregor, for example, was
officially one of two special assistants to the Secretary of the Treasury. When
the Secretary resigned so as to be able to devote every waking hour to
preparing testimony rebutting a federal grand jury's indictment of him on 114
counts of insider trading, a new Secretary was nominated and confirmed.
McGregor wrote the President's remarks for the new Secretary's swearing-in
ceremony and was, according to custom, invited to attend the ceremony. He went
through the receiving line, and when he came to the new Secretary, he shook
hands and said, "How do you do, sir? I wrote the President's remarks
swearing you in. I hope you liked them. I'm your special assistant. You will
never see me again. Goodbye."
The Secretary, who had been prepared to say
"Thank you" to some banal politesse, stopped at "Th . . . "
and looked as if he had been slapped in the face with a wet haddock. Another
well-wisher stood before him, hand extended, but the Secretary ignored him and
bent toward the President and whispered as he pointed at McGregor's back,
"Who was that?"
The President looked, squinted, glared and
then said, "A flake. I'm plagued by flakes."
When Burnham was hired, the job lottery placed
him in the Department of Energy. Like McGregor, he was a special assistant to
the Secretary. Like McGregor, he had passed not one day, not one hour, doing anything
for his employer. He had never laid eyes on his boss. He had been in contact
with only one person at his parent agency, a secretary in the personnel office
who fielded questions about W-2 forms and insurance claims.
There was one difference between Burnham's
situation and McGregor's: the issue of national security. For years, the
Department of Energy had been custodian of the keys to nuclear weaponry. As
successor to the Atomic Energy Commission, DOE oversaw the research,
development and construction of the flatware for the Last Supper. Let the
Pentagon decide where to hide the missiles; DOE determined the content of the
message each one would deliver. Only DOE knew how much to take from Column A to
mix with so much from column B to make an explosion that could turn an entire
continent into a memory.
All of which had affected Burnham not a whit.
Until today.
"Why are we talking about firing?"
Renfro asked. "Nobody's firing anybody. Quite the opposite." With a
dyspeptic smile, he opened his briefcase and pulled out a white envelope which
he passed to Burnham.
It was Burnham's biweekly pay envelope: In the
upper left comer, "Department of Energy,
Washington
,
D.C.
20585
." In the central window, "Burnham,
Timothy Y., E.O.B. 102."
Burnham said, "So?"
"Open it."
It was just a check, two slips of paper, one
with his name and the amount payable from the U.S. Treasury, one with all the
withholding information.
"A check!" Burnham said. "Is
this a voucher that I see before me, its PICA toward my hand?"
"What?" Renfro was bewildered, and
bewilderment made him feel a loss of control, and loss of control made him
fearful, and fear made his eyelids flutter.
Burnham tossed the check onto his desk and
said, "Thanks for coming by, but next time, why not just drop it in the
mail?"
"You mean"—Renfro fought to keep his
voice from slipping into the high tenor range—"you don't see anything
extraordinary about the check?"
"Nope."
"Like, for example, the amount?"
