“Maggie has a sister who lives a couple of blocks down, over on Rosedale,” MacGregor said, settling down into one of Adams’ leather chairs and calling after Adams as he headed for the kitchen. “Can’t stand the sister, so I came here while Maggie went there.”
Adams brought the electric percolator in and plugged it in at the bar. “Five minutes,” he said. “Ain’t modern science wonderful?”
MacGregor rubbed his hands together thoughtfully and stared into the flame that flickered in the fireplace. “It’s come, Aaron,” he said. “The President is appointing me Chief of Staff.”
Aaron carefully poured a measured amount of whipping cream into the blender. “Congratulations,” he said. “I’m not surprised. Who better?”
“Yes,” General MacGregor said. “It’s a fine way to end a military career. The short but violent life of the professional soldier. The President is hoping I’ll turn it down, of course. Maggie is, too, for that matter.”
Adams thought this over while the blender whipped the cream, drowning out any chance for conversation. “I can understand Maggie’s wanting you to turn down the job,” he said when he turned the blender off, “but why should the President care? The senior officers of the services traditionally pick the Chiefs of Staff and tell the President who to appoint. Now, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is an another matter; that has been known to be a political appointment.”
“This President,” MacGregor said, “seems to have a preference for men who owe him personal loyalty. He would have men about him who are his, even down to the lowest level. If he wasn’t afraid of the reaction, he’d like nothing better than to appoint some loyal brigadier general to the chairmanship, skipping him over the heads of a couple of hundred senior officers.”
“It’s a damn good way of engendering personal loyalty in even the most objective of men,” Adams agreed. “If you know that you owe your job to the incumbent, and you’re out when he’s out, the tendency to support his decisions must be almost overwhelming.”
MacGregor kept his gaze on the fire and accepted the Irish coffee silently when Adams handed it to him. He was obviously deeply troubled.
Adams settled into his own chair and sipped at his coffee, allowing the soothing combination of caffeine and alcohol to settle in his stomach and work its way into his bloodstream. He was remembering the time, almost thirty years ago, when he had first met Tank MacGregor.
It was somewhere in eastern France and MacGregor, three years out of West Point, was commanding a company of war-beaten Sherman tanks. Adams was called forward to interrogate some high-ranking Wehrmacht officers who had been captured by MacGregor’s men. “How did you capture them?” he asked the twenty-three-year-old captain.
MacGregor grinned and shrugged. “They didn’t expect to see me where I was.”
“Where was that?”
“At the German fuel depot. We were running low on diesel.”
Adams stared at him. “The German fuel depot?”
“That’s right. We ran down the road single file at about four in the morning until we came to the depot. Then we filled our tanks and blew the thing up. In the ensuing confusion we managed to pick up a few prisoners.”
“How did you know where the Germans kept their fuel depot?”
“I stared at a map and figured out where I would have put it if I were a German supply officer.”
By the time the war ended in Europe, Tank MacGregor was a lieutenant colonel, and well on his way to becoming a legend. In Korea, MacGregor got his eagle and developed ways to use the helicopter that turned it into a weapon of war. After Korea, MacGregor returned to Europe as Deputy Chief of Staff at SHAPE, and discovered organizational and administrative talents that brought him his first star. He also discovered the usefulness of his strong personal charisma and began self-consciously to develop those traits of character and appearance that built the charisma. Not that he yearned for personal power or glory, but being Tank MacGregor helped him do his job. The units under his command felt that they had something to live up to, and someone who would listen to their gripes, which made them better soldiers.
So MacGregor kept unchanged the oversized wire-rim glasses, and the cork-tipped stogie that he chewed on but never lit. And the legend grew, and he got his third star and his fourth, and he began appearing on Face the Nation and discussing defense policy and the war and the draft.
“What’s your problem?” Adams asked MacGregor. “You don’t want to be appointed Chief of Staff? Or you don’t just want him to appoint you, you want him to love you, too?”
“No, nothing like that, Aaron,” MacGregor said. He suddenly realized he still had his hat on, and he took it off and skimmed it across to the couch. Adams was shocked to see how gray his friend’s hair had become.
MacGregor shook his head. “I don’t know, Aaron. I don’t know what I’m saying. Last year, when I finished the tour in ’Nam, I was all set to retire. Just slowly and gracefully fade away. I’ve done enough, Aaron. God knows, I’ve done enough.”
“But?”
“But something’s happening I don’t understand. I can’t turn down Chief of Staff, Aaron, but I’m afraid that, after I’ve got it, I won’t be able to do it.”
“Why not?”
“The President’s taking over the Army. And we’re going to bump heads. And you know me, Aaron: old inflexible Tank. I can’t bend, so I’ll probably break. I just wish to hell I could figure out what that man thinks he’s doing. And why he’s doing it.”
“What is he doing?”
“All the sort of shit that screws up the chain of command and keeps people wondering who’s spying on who. He’s starting to take the title ‘Commander-in-Chief’ very seriously.” MacGregor took the cigar out of his mouth. “And the hell of it is, Aaron, that I voted for him.”
Adams took his ancient clay pipe from the table by his chair and cleaned the dottle from it with his penknife. “It’s not just the Army,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s not just the Army that the President is concerning himself about. He’s replaced most of the senior staff at CIA below the Director, and Lord only knows how much longer Dan Bohr will last. And just about the whole top level of the FBI is his now.” Adams pushed a plug of Balkan Sobranie tobacco firmly into the clay bowl of his pipe.
MacGregor leaned back in his chair and stuck the cigar back firmly between his teeth. “What’s he up to? I thought he just liked to play soldier.”
“I’m not sure,” Adams said. “There are a lot of little pieces, and only someone high up in the Executive Office would be able to get a good look at the pattern. But there are a few, ah, disquieting signs.”
“Like what?”
“The IRS has set up something they call the Special Intelligence Unit to examine selected tax returns. The President’s men do the selecting and send the lists down. Columnists who’ve written articles against the administration, owners of newspapers that didn’t support the President, movie stars who actively opposed the President’s policies, even congressmen who voted the wrong way.
“The Post Office is setting up a special unit to open mail at the President’s request. That’s first-class mail, you understand, and without any sort of legal formality like a warrant.”
MacGregor shook his head. “Hell, Aaron, you fellows used to do that over in CIA. Probably still do. Not that I think it’s right.”
“I’m not discussing morality,” Adams said. “You bend the law a little bit if you think it’s for the country’s good; maybe that’s acceptable. At least it’s debatable. But we did it against foreign agents, not Democrats.”
“Just what is it you think is happening?”
“As I said, I’m not sure,” Adams said. He paused to light his pipe with his vintage Zippo. “The President’s built this three-man wall around himself. Ober, Gildruss, and Vandermeer are the untouchables, and nobody can get to the President except through them.” He pointed a finger at MacGregor. “Thi
nk about this: the chain of command in the Army goes through the Chief of Staff—you—to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the Secretary of the Army to the Secretary of Defense to Dr. Peter Gildruss, Supersecretary, and then to the President.”
“So?”
“So everyone on the chain from you to the Secretary of Defense is accountable to both the President and to Congress. But the Supersecretary, Dr. Gildruss, is not a constitutional position. He’s accountable to no one but the President. And he’s empowered by the President to give orders to anyone in the chain under him, which is to say everyone in the Defense Department and the State Department. The man could trigger a war, and he’s not as accountable as the Secretary of Commerce. Every general officer has to be approved by Congress, but the guy in charge of the whole military and intelligence establishment is appointed by the President.”
Tank MacGregor nodded thoughtfully. “I noticed that as it went by,” he said. “With all the newspapers talking about how it would consolidate the government and make decisionmaking easier and maybe even save us some money in the long run, nobody seemed to notice that in the interest of efficiency he was stealing the reins of the government from the Congress.”
“Strange talk for the Army Chief of Staff,” Adams commented.
“The word, Aaron, is treason,” MacGregor said. “That’s what kept running through my mind when I first had these thoughts. And that’s what the court-martial would say, maybe. But then I realized something.” MacGregor paused and sipped at his drink.
“I swore an oath, Aaron, many years ago at the Point when they pinned those little gold bars to my shoulders. It’s almost the same oath that the President swears: to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.
“I took that oath very seriously back then, and I guess I still do. I hope it never comes to choosing between the President and the Constitution. But that phrase keeps coming back to me—‘all enemies, foreign…and domestic’.” MacGregor shook his head. “Let’s talk about something else,” he said. “You still running that poker game?”
CHAPTER TEN
Sunday, September 2, 1973
OF INTEREST TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC. THESE CONVENTIONS, “WORLDCONS” THEY ARE CALLED, ALTHOUGH MOST OF THEM HAVE BEEN HELD IN THE UNITED STATES, HAVE BEEN YEARLY EVENTS SINCE 1943. THE LAST ONE, HELD IN LOS A
BUST
84MPS
URGENT
WASHINGTON, 12:20 (MPS)—FIRST LEAD PRESIDENT NEWS CONFERENCE
AT AN UNSCHEDULED PRESS CONFERENCE CALLED THIS MORNING IN THE OVAL OFFICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE THE PRESIDENT ANNOUNCED THE APPOINTMENT OF DANIEL BOHR, THE DIRECTOR OF THE CIA, TO THE POST OF AMBASSADOR TO IRAN. HE SAID THAT HE WAS PLEASED TO HAVE A MAN OF BOHR’S INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE AVAILABLE FOR A POST THAT WAS GROWING INCREASINGLY MORE IMPORTANT IN THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES.
BOHR, WHO WAS WITH THE PRESIDENT, SAID HE WAS GLAD TO SERVE WHEREVER HIS COUNTRY NEEDED HIM.
BOHR’S DISTINGUISHED CAREER AS A PUBLIC SERVANT BEGAN IN F.D.R.’S SECOND TERM, AND HE HAS SERVED ABLY IN A VARIETY OF POSTS IN THE DEPARTMENTS OF STATE, DEFENSE, THE INTERIOR, AND FOR THE PAST SIX YEARS IN THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.
AS THE NEW DIRECTOR OF THE CIA, THE PRESIDENT HAS NAMED RALPH CARMICHAEL, WHO IS CURRENTLY SERVING AS ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL. CARMICHAEL HAS SERVED WITH THE PRESIDENT IN VARIOUS CAPACITIES SINCE THE PRESIDENT FIRST CAME TO WASHINGTON AS A CONGRESSMAN IN 1948.
IT IS NOT ANTICIPATED THAT EITHER BOHR OR CARMICHAEL WILL HAVE ANY DIFFICULTY IN THEIR SENATE CONFIRMATIONS. (MORE)
EDITORS: BOHR AND CARMICHAEL BIOS FOLLOW. CONTINUED
83MPS
ANGELES OVER LABOR DAY WEEKEND LAST YEAR WAS ATTENDED BY OVER THREE THOUSAND PERSONS. THE THREE DAYS OF SCI-FI REVELRY INCLUDED SUCH HAPPENINGS AS
BUST IT
BUST IT
BUST IT
85MPS
B U L L E T I N
FIRST LEAD RALPH SCHUSTER
WASHINGTON, 12:30 (MPS)—RALPH SCHUSTER, A REPORTER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST, WAS FOUND DEAD IN HIS APARTMENT THIS MORNING. SCHUSTER APPARENTLY COMMITTED SUICIDE BY PUTTING THE BARREL OF A SMALL CALIBER REVOLVER IN HIS MOUTH AND PULLING THE TRIGGER. A NEIGHBOR HEARD THE SHOT AND TELEPHONED THE POLICE, WHO WERE THERE IN MINUTES. THEY FORCED THEIR WAY INTO THE APARTMENT AND FOUND SCHUSTER’S BODY ON THE LIVING ROOM COUCH. HE LEFT A NOTE, THE TEXT OF WHICH HAS NOT BEEN RELEASED AT THIS TIME, BUT IT IS BELIEVED TO STATE THAT HE WAS DRIVEN TO HIS ACT BY “THE PRESIDENT’S MEN.” WHAT HE MEANT BY THIS IS NOT KNOWN.
SCHUSTER WAS ON THE CITY DESK OF THE POST, WHERE HE HAD BEEN FOR THE PAST THREE YEARS.
(MORE)
Kit Young groaned and rolled over in his sleep, throwing what was left of the bedclothes onto the floor. An unappetizing sort of man, thought Miriam, looking down at his twisted form, half child and half ape. I can’t for the life of me figure out why I’m so fond of him. She prodded him with her index finger. “Wake up, my love,” she said softly, “the bird is on the wing!”
Kit opened one eye and stared fuzzily up at her. “He’ll freeze his ass off,” he said. “It’s cold out there.” He groped around for a minute, his hand encountering nothing but rumpled sheet, then he sat up and opened his other eye. “What have you done with the blankets?” he demanded.
“They’re on the floor where you threw them.”
“Did no such thing,” he said. “What time is it?”
“Almost one. Want some orange juice?”
“That’s what I like about you,” Kit said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “You’re always ready with a kind word and a glass of orange juice. I don’t know how anyone can be so damn cheery in the morning.”
“How would you know what I’m like in the morning?” Miriam said sweetly. “You’ve never been awake in the morning.”
Kit considered this. “I’ll take a shower. When my blood sugar gets high enough I’ll join in this repartee.” He stood up and staggered into the bathroom. “Any clean towels?” he called out as he closed the door.
“On the rack,” she yelled through the door.
“Um!” he called back. Then the water went on. Miriam went out into her kitchen and busied herself preparing brunch: Nova Scotia salmon, bagels, cream cheese, thin slices of Bermuda onion. She broke five eggs into a bowl and whipped them up, then set her French enameled frying pan on a low fire and hoped the butter wouldn’t burn before Kit got out of the shower.
Miriam found that she enjoyed the mornings when Kit stayed over with her for themselves, and not just as echoes of the night before. She would get up before Kit—no great problem—and prepare an elaborate breakfast. On days when he wasn’t working and slept until early afternoon, she would prepare an even more elaborate lunch. Perhaps she was finally developing the nesting instinct, and any day now she’d start going all soft inside at the thought of tiny feet and wet diapers and four a.m. feedings. Well, she certainly hoped not. She and Kit had a very good thing going: they enjoyed each other’s company, they respected each other, they turned each other on, they were good in bed together, and they never argued about money. It would sure be a shame to spoil all that by getting married.
Now that Kit had left CIA and gone to work directly for the President, their one great source of argument was gone. Not that Miriam had changed her views, but now Kit flatly refused to discuss politics or the administration in any way. Miriam didn’t agree with his position, but he was immovable.
So she suppressed her feelings and, since politics was the only thing they had ever argued about, they never fought anymore. But it was still there between them. Kit was looking increasingly depressed when she saw him, and he admitted that it was about the job but refused to discuss it. He had several times snorted and left the room in the middle of a news broadcast, usually when something Miriam thought quite innocuous was being discussed. He still didn’t seem overly concerned about the continuing so
cial unrest or any of the other issues that Miriam held close to her heart, but even little unimportant changes in government or things like the interview with the director of the new Institute for an Informed America would get him upset. She had urged him to discuss it, if not with her, then with Aaron, but he was adamant about keeping his mouth closed. “Maybe someday I’ll write one hell of a memoir,” he said.
So they had peace, and Kit had problems that he couldn’t share with her. And she was happy for the peace, and unhappy for what Kit couldn’t share, and still it was better than fighting.
Kit came out of the bedroom buttoning his shirt-sleeves and stood in front of the big living room mirror to knot his tie. “What’s the tie for?” Miriam asked, knowing she was fighting a losing fight. “Where are we going?”
“A man is either dressed or undressed,” Kit said, “and if he’s dressed, he has a tie.”
Miriam shrugged expressively. “I refuse to argue with a man’s religion,” she said.
“I had a great-uncle who went insane,” Kit told her. “Spent his declining years in a home for the bewildered up in Massachusetts. Walked around all day stark naked except for a string tie and a top hat.” He paused. “Aren’t you going to ask me why?”
“I know better,” she told him.
“When I graduated from college I went up to see my great-uncle,” Kit continued. “Must have been in his eighties then. I asked him. ‘Uncle Jebedah, why don’t you have any clothes on?’ ‘Why should I?’ he asked me. ‘It’s hot as the other place in here, and nobody ever comes to see me anyway.’ ‘But Uncle,’ I objected, ‘what about the hat and tie?’ He looked at me like I was the one who was crazy. ‘Somebody might come,’ he said. I have never forgotten those words of wisdom.”
The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America Page 8
