Justice said quietly, “Should I leave you alone now, sir?”
Augustine lowered his hands. “Yes,” he said, “maybe you should. I have an appointment with Mr. Harper in a few minutes and there are some papers I should look over before he gets here.”
Justice stood and nodded respectfully and went out of the office, past George Radebaugh, the appointments secretary, who did not look up from his desk, and into the outer corridor. The image of the President’s strained face hung heavily in his mind.
Two
In the executive restroom down the hall from the Oval Office, Maxwell Harper was drying his hands on a towel when the door opened and the President’s favorite bodyguard stepped inside. He turned as the man, Justice, said, “Oh, good morning, Mr. Harper.”
“Justice.”
Harper watched him cross to one of the urinals, stand there in a stiff, almost military posture of attention. He wondered with dry humor if the Secret Service indoctrinated its men to urinate that way. They were a regimented lot, in any case, and while Harper felt little common ground with any of them-they were like bland sticks of furniture: necessary, functional, unobtrusive-he admitted to an admiration for their unshakable control. He was a controlled man himself; he believed that absolute control, at all times, in all circumstances, was the key to success. It had been the key to his own success, certainly: his rise from political science professor at Harvard to the Wilson chair at Northwestern to Nicholas Augustine’s foremost advisor on domestic affairs.