Acts of Mercy Read Online Free PDF Page B

realized that she had moved to him again; she caught his hand in hers. “Is there anything you want me to do, dear?”
    “No,” Augustine said, “it’s just not going to work tonight.” He felt irritable; his headache was worse now. He drew his hand away. “You’re disappointed in me, aren’t you.”
    “Of course not-”
    “You don’t have to pretend, Claire. You are disappointed in me, and not just because of what didn’t happen a minute ago.”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Don’t you? I saw the look you gave me at dinner, after you put Austin in his place. You were telling me the same thing you told him, that maybe I ought to get out because I can’t handle the presidency anymore.”
    She was silent for a time. “Yes,” she said finally, “you’re right that I don’t think you should run for reelection. But it’s not because I believe you can’t handle the presidency. It’s because of what the office is doing to you. Do you honestly feel you can go through another exhausting campaign, another four years without ...”
    She broke off.
    “Without what?” Augustine said.
    “Without suffering any more. Without ruining your health. You’ve changed in these last few months, Nicholas. You’ve ... changed.”
    The irritability increased. “You’re like all the rest of them,” he said. “Pushing me with one hand and pulling me with the other. You all want something and when you can’t have it or you’ve got it and you’re afraid of losing it, you put the blame on me.”
    “Have I ever said or done anything in the twenty years we’ve been married that wasn’t in your best interests?”
    Her voice was soft, patient, reasonable; she was always so imperturbable, so in command of her emotions that at times like this it made him feel frustrated, inadequate. “What about your best interests?” he said. “I suppose you had no ambitions of your own, you never wanted to be the First Lady, the wife of the President of the United States.”
    “I wanted to be the wife of President Nicholas Augustine, yes. But you’ve given four important, productive years; isn’t that enough work and sacrifice for one person? You’re not a machine, Nicholas. You’re a fifty-six-year-old man who—”
    “Who is starting to lose his grip?”
    “—who deserves a rest and a chance to live the remainder of his life in peace and privacy. It’s not as if you would be leaving politics altogether; you would still have influence, you could—”
    “I’ve heard enough of this,” Augustine said. He swung out of bed, caught up his bathrobe.
    “Nicholas ...”
    “Good night, Claire,” he said, and walked out and shut the connecting door behind him.
    Alone in his own bed, head throbbing, mind working like an engine that coughed and stuttered and would not shut down, he found himself listening to the faint noises that houses make in the night. Harry Truman had once said that the White House cracked and popped all night long, and that you could imagine that old Jackson or Andy Johnson or some other ghost was walking. It was a nice prison, he said, but a prison nevertheless. No man in his right mind would want to come here of his own accord.
    And maybe he was right, Augustine thought. Restoration hadn’t changed the old place any; it was still a prison full of the ghosts of long-dead presidents, wandering through the vast halls, whispering to the man who now occupied the premises, telling him things that he could not hear and dared not listen to if he could. Telling him that one day he would join them and add his voice to theirs, because no matter what he did from now on he was one of them: the presidency was a life sentence, an eternal sentence, and there was no way he was ever going to get out.

Six
     
    We are still not quite sure of the identities of the traitors, but the evidence is beginning to mount strongly against one man in particular. Is he the leader of the conspiracy among those close to the