The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America

by Michael Kurland

  Clearly, if Kit was going to do this at all, he’d better do it right. He’d have to speak to everyone involved: the arresting officers, the duty sergeant, and anyone else who had dealt with the five John Does, and impress on them the value of having a short memory.

  Veber came into the office. “You look thoughtful,” he said.

  Kit nodded. “I just spoke to my boss.”

  THE OVAL OFFICE, June 18, 1972 ( 5:24-6:17 p.m.)

  MEETING: The President, Vandermeer, and Ober.

  AUTHORIZED TRANSCRIPTION FROM THE EXECUTIVE ARCHIVES

  Following a discussion of election campaign strategy, Billy Vandermeer raises the matter of the flap at the Watergate complex.

  V. It is late but I hope, sir, we can turn briefly to that little problem area that came up yesterday. The matter that Charlie had to wake you up for.

  P. Yeah. Must have been four in the morning. But I have no complaints. You handled it fine, Charlie.

  O. Thank you, sir.

  V. Ed St. Yves, too. He has a good head on his shoulders. He got it all buttoned up and under control right away. This could have been damn serious.

  P. We put it on the line, didn’t we? I mean, with me on the phone. We let it all hang out. A great defensive play. Blam, right on the receiver with no yardage gained. But we sold it, didn’t we?

  O. Yes. The five were released with nobody taking a second look. And that CIA liaison guy came through for us. The kid could have kicked this whole thing right up to his bosses at Langley. Instead, he accepted your direct authority as Commander-in-Chief.

  P. Right. Good guy.

  V. But you know damn well that he’s going to cover his ass. He’s probably typing his report out right now—in triplicate.

  O. Billy, we always knew that it’s only a matter of time before the Director gets wise to the SIU.[1] Hell, he’s already got it roughed out.

  V. Sure, but a botched bag job like yesterday is just the ammo he needs to move to eliminate SIU. We don’t want to give the Director a handle. And we might want a dependable pipeline into the Agency. So I suggest we use what we’re given.

  P. Okay. What’s the game plan?

  V. We transfer Christopher Young to the White House Staff—immediately. He’s proved his loyalty to the presidency. We reward him now. Make him White House Liaison to the Intelligence Community: CIA, Defense Intelligence, like that. That way he’s rewarded and CIA’s signaled off. Besides, Young is the perfect tripwire if—or maybe I should say when—CIA takes to snooping around the White House.

  P. Great! Don’t you agree, Charlie?

  O. That might play.

  The clock by Kit’s bed said four-fifteen when he woke up. For a second he had that curious sense of disorientation that attacks people with erratic sleep schedules: he didn’t know whether it was four-fifteen in the morning or afternoon. Lifting his blinds, he stared out at the gray Washington sky. Afternoon. That made it Sunday. That meant he hadn’t slept through his date with Miriam. He had a full fifteen minutes to pick her up at her apartment in Georgetown. Cursing the selective deafness that enabled him to sleep through every alarm in every clock ever made, he rolled out of bed and staggered into the shower.

  He was only half an hour late. Miriam was on the steps of her red brick building waiting for him, trying not to look annoyed, the wind playing games with her long brown hair.

  “The traffic—” he said.

  “Bullshit!” she replied, not looking at him.

  “Okay, I overslept. It just feels so damn silly saying ‘I overslept’ at five in the evening.” He pulled her toward him to kiss her. After a moment’s stubborn resistance, she yielded and returned the kiss with sudden warmth.

  “I am very fond of you, you know. If you’d grow your hair longer, I’d run my fingers through it. And if you’d get a normal job and work normal hours, you’d be able to keep your social engagements.”

  “I like my job,” he told her. “Excitement, danger, romance, far-off places, angry women.… Are we going to Aaron’s?”

  “Right,” she said. “My car or yours, as the actress said to the bishop?”

  “Yours,” Kit said. He gave Miriam a last hug and they started, hand in hand, for her parking space. “And you drive. It’s not fit work for a man. I almost killed myself twice getting over here.”

  “Sleep-driving is a special skill,” Miriam agreed, unlocking the passenger-side door of her Volkswagen and starting around. Kit watched Miriam as she climbed in beside him, and once again he wondered at the providence that had brought her into his life. They had met at one of Aaron B. Adams’ small dinner parties three years before. Professor Adams had seated his newest assistant professor, Ms. Miriam Kassel, campus liberal, next to Christopher Young, Jr., CIA, apolitical conservative, and then sat back to watch. They disagreed on just about everything political, and somehow they were unable to talk about anything but politics. Kit’s worst moment had come when, in exasperation, he had admitted that actually he just didn’t care much one way or the other about politics. Miriam had exploded and told him that not caring was a worse moral crime than being wrong.

  But somehow Kit and Miriam had found, without discussing it, that there was something pulling them together that made all the arguments about politics worthwhile, that made the times when they didn’t argue sweeter and fuller and more beautiful than either of them had known before.

  “That strange buzzing in your ears,” Miriam said sweetly, “won’t stop unless you buckle your seat belt. Not that I’m trying to influence your actions.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Kit buckled the belt. “You know, actually, I have a very good job. It keeps me here near you. I could have been assigned to Saigon or Phnom Penh or one of those other resort areas where the natives spend their spare time taking potshots at American civilians.”

  “They only acquired the habit because American soldiers spend so much time shooting at them,” Miriam said.

  “Oops,” Kit said. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I just wish you wouldn’t take your gripes against the policies of this administration out on me. I’m merely a minor bureaucrat. My job is to report facts, not to decide what’s done with them. I just work for the government.”

  “The CIA,” Miriam said.

  “Intelligence-gathering is not a more intrinsically evil profession than college teaching.”

  “If the CIA’s only activity were intelligence gathering, I wouldn’t say a word. But both you and I know that isn’t so. You must know it far better than I.”

  “Please get that pedantic tone out of your voice,” Kit said. “I’m sorry I can’t discuss the inner policy-making of the Agency with you, but I’m far too junior for anyone to ever discuss it with me. Technically I’m not even supposed to admit to you that I’m CIA.”

  “Come on,” Miriam said. “When Aaron first introduced us he told me you were CIA. It must be a very open secret.”

  “Professor Adams is part of what we call the old-boy network. He was in OSS with a lot of people very high up in the Agency now, including my present boss. But since he’s retired from the, ah, government service, he’s assumed the right to discuss many things that we GS types aren’t supposed to talk about—including my work.”

  “What’s your point?” Miriam asked.

  “My only point is that, since I’m not allowed to discuss my work, it isn’t fair for you to take potshots at it—or me.”

  “Bang,” Miriam said. “A potshot’s better than a bullet any day.”

  “Listen, I agree with you,” Kit said. “I think the war is a mess and it’s being handled all wrong.”

  “Yes, but you also think they ought to go over there and beat the shit out of those nasty North Vietnamese,” Miriam said. “Bomb ’em back to the stone age.”

  “Damn right,” Kit said as a way of ending the discussion. And it did. Miriam sulked the rest of the way over to Professor Adams’ Chevy Chase estate.

  Professor Aaron B. Adams did not maintain his t
hree-story stone house with swimming pool and guest cottage, along with its two acres of very subdividable land, on the salary of a tenured professor in Georgetown University’s Department of Government and Political Science. Not even when that was added to his retirement pay from the various secret branches of the government he had served in. Had it not been for an obscure Adams ancestor somewhere—after the two who had been impecunious but honorable Presidents—who had gone into business in Boston importing Japanese habutae silk and had later expanded into mother-of-pearl buttons, Professor Adams could not even have afforded the guest cottage.

  Of course, as Professor Adams himself liked to say, his fondness for money was such that, had he not inherited it, he probably would have occupied himself with making it. In which case the United States would have lost a brilliant intelligence officer and Aaron B. Adams would have led a much duller life.

  Miriam parked behind the four other cars in the driveway, groped in the back seat for a large straw tote bag, and preceded Kit into the house. Neither residents nor guests were in evidence as they crossed through the huge living room and through the open French windows to the cabaña area next to the pool, which was one of the most imposing features of the Adams house.

  Even compared to the house and grounds surrounding it, the pool was large. The previous owner of the house had been told by a mystic that his son was going to be an Olympic swimmer, so he built a full Olympic pool for him to practice in. This was in 1932 when labor was cheap and Sonny was five years old. Thirteen years later, after paying a lot of money to get his son cleared of charges of draft evasion, the father closed the house and moved back to Iowa.

  For nine years, the house and the pool lay vacant. Then Adams bought it at auction and moved in, lock, stock, and unwritten memoirs. After two years of starting his memoirs, Adams decided he was too young for such nonsense and took a part-time teaching position at Georgetown. “You understand this is only temporary,” they told him. “Suits me,” he said.

  In his spare time he taught a couple of courses for the newly formed CIA, at the behest of some of his old OSS buddies. He tried to give a sense of historical perspective to the business of espionage, and found himself fighting a growing trend to rely less upon men and more upon gadgets. Gradually his job at the university grew into a full-time position. Then he was offered a full professorship with tenure, and discovered that he had become an academic.

  Adams was pushing himself out of the pool as they approached. A short, compact man, he looked in very good shape for his fifty-plus years. “Welcome,” he said, shielding his eyes against the sun to stare up at them. “What’s up? Have you got suits, or do you need loaners?”

  Miriam held up the straw tote bag. “Still in here from the last time,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I forgot to take them out.”

  “Probably mildewed,” Kit said, “and we’ll come down with some exotic form of crotch rot. But we’ll make do.”

  Adams nodded thoughtfully. “Togetherness, even in vulgarity. This here modern generation shows promise, as Plato once said. Pick a cabaña and change. Gerald is inside somewhere decanting for the other guests”—he indicated an assortment of the usual academic and government types scattered about the pool area with a wave of his hand—“and if you’ll indicate a preference, I’ll have him deal you in.”

  Gerald was a middle-aged war orphan whom Adams had picked up in one of his trips to occupied Europe during “the Big One,” World War II. It was believed that Gerald could not speak; it was certain that he did not. He could, however, understand in almost every language. He served Adams as a sort of majordomo and secretary.

  “Coffee,” Kit said.

  “If you could have him mix me a Bloody Mary,” Miriam said, “I’d appreciate it.”

  “Whatever you appreciate,” Adams said, “I arrange.” He did his best to affect a lecherous leer.

  “If you weren’t the head of my department, I’d tell you what you look like when you do that. And to hell with your togetherness!” And she turned around and strode toward a cabaña.

  “An abrupt mood change,” Adams commented, pushing himself to his feet and heading toward the poolside intercom.

  “Women,” Kit said, shaking his head sadly in an exaggerated gesture of compassion. “Unstable.”

  “I understand they make the best mothers,” Adams said. “I myself have attempted to make an occasional mother, with varying degrees of success.”

  “How’d you like to have a talk with me for a few minutes?” Kit asked. “After I change into my suit, so it doesn’t attract attention poolside.”

  “We can wander off and look at my petunias,” Adams said. “By the way, when you encounter Miriam in the cabaña, see if you can find out what she thinks I look like when I do that,” he added, once more composing his face into a leer.

  “Fair enough,” Kit said, and headed off to change and talk to Miriam.

  “Groucho Marx,” he said when he returned in his navy-blue swim trunks.

  “Exactly the effect I was trying for,” Adams said. “The two heroes of my youth were Groucho Marx and Bugs Bunny. I’ve given up trying to look like Bugs Bunny. Are you and Miriam having a fight?”

  “Not about anything important,” Kit said. “Only about my job and politics.”

  “That’s good,” Adams said. “I was afraid it was over food or sex or something important. I like you both, and I’d hate having to see you on alternate weeks. You’d never have stood a chance with Miriam in the first place if I hadn’t thought it destructive of departmental morale to make passes at assistant professors.”

  “I know,” Kit said, “and I appreciate that.”

  They walked over to what Adams referred to as the “more or less formal garden” on the east side of the house, and stood staring at the carefully sculptured rows of varicolored blooms.

  “It’s about the job,” Kit said.

  “I assumed,” Adams told him. “Who else can you talk to about the Company but an old lag like me?”

  “A strange thing happened to me yesterday,” Kit said. “And it doesn’t exactly involve the Company.”

  “Tell me about it,” Adams said, looking interested.

  Kit described the trip to the police station in the early morning, the events leading up to the phone call, and the call itself.

  “So you got them off,” Adams said.

  “Yes. I don’t know whether I was right or wrong, but I couldn’t see that I had any choice.” He picked up a twig and broke it between his fingers. “What do you think?”

  “There are several interesting possibilities that present themselves,” Adams said. He ticked them off on his fingers. “One: it may not have been the President, or even the White House, you spoke to.”

  “What?” Kit looked startled. “I hadn’t thought of that! How—?”

  ”Easy,” Adams said. “According to prearranged plan, in case they get caught they tell the police to call you, and then they tell you to call the White House. Meanwhile, under the street by the police station, a henchman is splicing the phone wire and practicing his imitation of that famous presidential voice.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Kit said.

  “Two,” Adams said, “it was Ober and the President, and everything they told you was completely true.”

  “I vote for two,” Kit said.

  “Three,” Adams said, “it was Ober and the President, but the whole story was a complete fabrication. Which would imply that a group of common criminals have something so serious on the White House that they can make the President and his chief domestic adviser lie for them.

  “Four: The President of the United States, for purely political motives, had his agents burglarizing and bugging the offices of the Democratic National Committee.

  “Five: Ober was doing it without the President’s knowledge or consent, but was able to get him to agree to cover it up.”

  “I don’t like any of those but two,” Kit said. “I’ve been mulling over variant
s of three, four, and five all day while I typed out my report.”

  “Your response was completely correct in any of those scenarios except one,” Adams said. “And if the President tells you to do something that’s proper to do, then it’s your job to do it. I agree that option one isn’t very likely.”

  “You think it’s proper of me to help get off his men if what they were doing was actually a burglary for political motives?”

  “If you knew that for sure,” Adams said, “then no.”

  “What you’re saying is that the President’s motives are none of my concern, is that right?”

  “Not at all. What I’m saying is that it is not your privilege to guess at the President’s motives. It is, however, your job to make a full report of this to your superiors and let them evaluate the President’s motives and what to do about them.”

  “I’m doing that. But I’d really like to figure this out, for my own sake. None of it really makes sense. Cubans infiltrating the Democrats?”

  “I doubt that,” Adams said. “But I’m quite willing to believe that the President of the United States thinks there are Communist agents secretly supporting the party that’s trying to oust him—implacable enemy of communism that he is. The man doesn’t seem to trust anyone.”

  “Don’t you think it could have been just a political move?”

  Adams shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “But that’s the most stupid of the possibilities. Any professional intelligence officer would have assessed the gain against the possible damage and dropped the idea. If you get caught, you could blow the whole campaign, and if you don’t get caught, what can you learn? Where the next pep rally is going to be held? No, if I had to vote, I’d go with the President’s paranoia.”

  “But you think I did right in going along with it?”

  “I’m not going to give you right or wrong,” Adams said, “but you did what you had to do. You had no acceptable choice.”