The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America

by Michael Kurland

  Kit sipped his drink and watched the reflection of the setting sun break into a thousand golden ripples in the Potomac in front of the car. “Okay,” he said. “What’s it all about?” He turned to look at her and found her staring through the windshield. She was a striking woman in profile, with the sort of late-maturing beauty that softens and deepens as the years pass. Twenty-five years ago she had probably been skinny, gaunt, and awkward, but the lines that age put in her face were lines of wisdom and trust and a certain feminine compassion.

  “We haven’t talked much, you and I,” she said.

  “That’s true,” Kit agreed.

  “What makes you think this is ‘about’ anything? Maybe I just want to get to know you. We should work closely, you and I, we should know each other.”

  “I would like,” Kit said, “to know you better.” He smiled. “As the real power behind SIU, you’re an important person to be friendly with. But”—he stared into his glass—“for some reason I don’t think you brought me here out of sudden admiration for my deep masculine voice or my triceps.”

  Dianna leaned back and laughed from somewhere deep in her throat. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re very perceptive. But, you know, that’s what most of them are going to think.”

  “Most of whom?”

  “My fellow Plumbers. They think I’ve entered the menopausal age of lust. I chase young boys around to lure them into my bed. I can’t keep away from anything in pants.”

  Kit said, “They think that.”

  Dianna nodded. “And with good cause,” she added. “I—let us say I discovered sex late in life. I enjoy it, every messy minute of it. And you’d be surprised how many young men like older women. They want to be mothered, I suppose. And if what I’m doing is mothering, then I enjoy that, too. Older men don’t want to be mothered, they want to be married.”

  She paused and stared at him. “And now you wonder why I’m telling you all this.”

  “You believe in frank honesty as a, um, seductive technique?” Kit asked.

  “Not at all,” Dianna said. “Although I do believe in brutal honesty, whenever possible. I don’t need seductive techniques. I don’t chase, despite what my associates think. I seem to attract this sort of young man without effort. Thank God. I’d be no good whatever at chasing. Besides, I know all about you and your Miriam.”

  Kit stared at her. “You know what?” he demanded.

  She shrugged. “It’s in your file.”

  “They ran a check on me?”

  “Of course,” she said. “You don’t think the SIU is going to trust CIA if it doesn’t have to, do you? We got your CIA backgrounder and then carried on from there.”

  “I should have guessed,” Kit said. “I don’t even know why I’m either surprised or annoyed, but I am—both.”

  Dianna nodded. “So I’m not here to seduce you,” she said. “But my known proclivity in that direction gives this meeting what you might call a natural cover.”

  “Cover,” Kit said. “For what?”

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Young. Just between the two of us.”

  Kit considered for a moment. “Fair enough,” he said.

  Dianna shifted in her seat so she could look at him better, one arm wrapped around the steering wheel and one leg drawn under her Harris tweed skirt. “It’s getting cold,” she said. “We’d better put the top up.”

  They got out of the car and Kit helped Dianna assemble and button down the frame and canvas top. Then they got back inside the Jag, and Dianna pushed the starter and slowly guided the car down the side road parallel to the river. “I want to talk to you,” she said, “about your investigation of the death of Ralph Schuster.”

  Kit nodded. “Okay. What about it?”

  “How did he die?”

  “Just like you read in the papers,” Kit said. “Suicide.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Come on, Dianna,” Kit said. “You must have read the reports I turned in.”

  “I read them,” she said. “What I want to know is what you didn’t put in them.”

  “Like what?”

  She pulled the car off the road again and turned the engine off. “Like Suzanne,” she said.

  “Schuster’s girl friend,” Kit said. “There was no reason to put her in the report. You know how damn hard it is to keep anything secret. Think of all the reasons why I shouldn’t mention her, and then tell me one why I should.”

  “She was raped.”

  “Yes, I know, about a month before Schuster committed suicide,” Kit said, wondering how Dianna knew anything about her. “I asked Schuster’s psychiatrist—you know he was a depressive? That he was seeing a shrink?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, well. I asked his shrink whether Mrs. Chartre’s experience could have caused Schuster enough stress to push him over the edge. The doctor didn’t think so.”

  “He hadn’t seen Ralph for about six weeks,” Dianna said. “Since before the rape.”

  “That’s right,” Kit said. This conversation was heading somewhere and Kit wasn’t leading. All sorts of interesting questions came to mind, but he suppressed them and waited.

  Dianna took off her driving gloves and put her right hand on his shoulder. “I have a sense about people,” she said. “And, over the years, I’ve learned to trust it. And my sixth sense tells me you’re not one of them. I need to believe that. I need to tell you something. And then I need you to tell me something.”

  “Not one of whom?” Kit asked.

  She considered him. And then she reached behind her seat for her glass and poured it full of vodka. Without ice. She drank about half of it down in a gulp and stared at the wood-paneled dashboard. “The bastards,” she said. “The bastards that are all around us and won’t let us live.”

  Kit nodded, wondering precisely who she meant.

  “Suzanne was beat up pretty bad during the rape,” Dianna said. “She was put in the hospital. Naturally Ralph couldn’t go visit her, and it drove him crazy. I sat up with him for the better part of three nights while he ranted about what animals men are.”

  “You knew him?”

  “I was his source,” Dianna said. “It was my idea. There was—is—crap going on here that I can’t stomach. Not silently, anyway. Surely you figured that out by now?”

  “I was approaching that conclusion,” Kit said.

  “Going to turn me in?”

  Kit paused for a second. “No,” he said.

  “We started with a purely business relationship,” she said. “I’d sneak away in an unassigned motor-pool car and meet him after midnight in some parking lot.”

  “Very dramatic,” Kit said.

  “Very paranoid,” Dianna amended. “Paranoia has become endemic in the Executive Branch. Everyone is treading on eggs, with the vague feeling that they’re doing something illegal and are going to get caught. So someone who decides to snitch, like me, becomes doubly paranoid.”

  “You passed information to Schuster? On what?”

  “The various nasty and illegal things SIU was doing in the name of National Security, or Executive Privilege, or Power to the President, or whatever. Schuster was slowly building a story, documenting what I gave him where he could and printing just enough to keep his editors happy until he could get it all together.”

  “And meanwhile the Plumbers are going crazy tapping each others’ phones and trying to trace the leak,” Kit said. “And you can avoid it all because all the orders go across your desk.”

  Dianna shrugged. “Wrong. If they tapped my phone, the order wouldn’t cross my desk. So I had to assume they were. Schuster and I found a safe house and spent hours going over details. Gradually we became good friends. More. Partners in a love affair. Except that instead of loving each other, we both loved some sort of abstract goal we were aiming for. The idea that your President shouldn’t lie to you, that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and not Executive Whim.”

>   “Dangerous radical doctrine,” Kit said, “in these days of the Silent Majority.”

  Dianna laughed. “Have you ever met the ‘Silent Majority’?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Thirty girls in a room in the White House basement. They call it ‘Plans and Schedules,’ I think. All day long they type letters in support of the President on some subject or other. About a thousand letters a day, shipped out to the Midwest on Air Force planes for mailing.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Kit said.

  “That’s what Ralph said.” Dianna pulled out a filter-tip cigarette and lit it with a large gold lighter. “Anyway, I spent three nights with Ralph while he waited for Suzanne to call. He was mad—furious—but not depressed. The third night she called. She wanted Ralph to tell her who the men were. She was calm—sedated, I suppose—but insistent. It took Ralph a while to get enough of the story out of her to figure out what had happened.”

  “She wanted Schuster to tell her who the men who raped her—”

  ”That’s right. It seems that they kept telling her that Ralph would explain. That Ralph had sent them.”

  “I see,” Kit said. And he did. “And she blamed Schuster?”

  “No, not at all. She knew it was some sort of horrible mistake and Ralph would explain. She apologized to him.”

  Kit felt ill. “That’s incredible.”

  “That’s the last time I saw Ralph,” Dianna told him. “And I have to know whether he—whether he did it to himself or had help. I don’t think that if he had help they would have left that note. But I have to know. Either way, I’ll feel just as guilty, but I have to know which it was.”

  “Suicide,” Kit said. “I’m no expert myself, but the police sergeant who handled the case is, and he explained the findings to me carefully. Schuster typed the note himself. The shot was heard, and people were on the stairs and in his room within a minute. And it’s not your fault.”

  “I had just decided to quit and come into the open when I heard the news. I was going to call him that day and tell him.”

  “And now?” Kit asked.

  “Now I’ll keep boring from within. Gather the facts and try to find people on the outside who aren’t afraid to use them.”

  “Be careful,” Kit said. “What you’re doing could be dangerous—even lethal.” As he said it he realized, for the first time, that it was only too true.

  “Someone has to do something,” Dianna said.

  “You can’t fight the whole executive branch,” Kit told her.

  “Oh, you can fight them,” she said. “You just can’t win.”

  Late that night Kit drove to Aaron Adams’ house, taking a roundabout way and doubling back several times to make sure he wasn’t followed. “I have to talk to you,” he told Adams.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TRANSCRIPT: AMERICA WANTS TO KNOW (excerpt)

  Sunday, February 24, 1974

  Today’s interview is with United States Senator Kevin P. Ryan, a New York Democrat, very much in the news today because of the serious charges he has leveled against the administration.

  Interviewers:

  Daniel Gores of the Baltimore Sun

  Roberta Gondolphe of the United Broadcasting Company

  Morris Feffer of the New York Post

  Moderated by George Brownworthy

  Brownworthy: Welcome to America Wants to Know, Senator Ryan. You startled America at a news conference Thursday with a series of broad-based charges against the administration and its policies, particularly in regard to specific allegations of wrongdoing in several government agencies. Do you intend to further document these charges with hard evidence, and do you intend to have the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which you are a member, launch an investigation?

  Ryan: Let me, ah, state my position once again, Mr. Brownworthy. These were not specific charges of wrongdoing, for I named no individual and cited no specific acts. There have been serious allegations made to my office, and I felt that the American public has a right to know what is going on in its government.

  Brownworthy: Mr. Gores.

  Gores: Don’t you feel, Senator, that such charges should be investigated and their veracity determined before you make them public and, perhaps, frighten a lot of people?

  Ryan: As I said in my press conference, Mr. Gores, a list of the specific charges, with as much detail as was consonant with preserving the anonymity of the informants, was turned over to the Justice Department for action some two weeks ago. They have informed me that there is no basis for action, which I do not believe. As I do not have the facilities myself to conduct the necessary investigation, my only recourse was to go to the people. As to frightening the public, if an express train is racing down the track out of control and about to hit you, telling you about it might scare the heck out of you, but it will probably save your life.

  Brownworthy: Miss Gondolphe.

  Gondolphe: As you know, Senator, the Presidents press secretary, Robert Fuller, was questioned about these changes at a White House briefing on Friday, and he denied the truth of any of them. He was quoted as saying, “Senator Ryan is a Democrat and it’s an election year. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear even wilder charges coming from his office before November.” How would you reply to this?

  Ryan: Over national television I will refrain from using the first phrase that comes to mind. But just let me say this: The information has been coming into our office for some time from a wide variety of sources. How Mr. Fuller—or his boss—can completely refute it overnight is something I would like explained. Such efficiency should be shared with the other branches of government.

  Brownworthy: Mr. Feffer.

  Feffer: Let us go over some of the charges we’re talking about here. You said that the IRS was using its authority to investigate tax returns for political motives—

  Ryan: In certain instances.

  Feffer: Yes, in certain instances. And that the FBI was engaging in political activities—

  Ryan: That’s right.

  Feffer: And that certain governmental regulatory agencies—like the FCC and the CAB—were using their power to harass the political enemies—you did say “enemies”—of the administration.

  Ryan: You understand that these were not accusations. That is, not on my part. These allegations were made to me, and I couldn’t ignore them. I tried to get confirmation or denial from the various agencies. What I got was a constant runaround. So I had no choice but to go to the people.

  Feffer: What do you think that this governmental interference indicates, Senator? Assuming that the charges are substantiated. What is it that’s happening to the government?

  Ryan: That’s an interesting question, Mr. Feffer. I was about to reply that it wasn’t the government but the executive branch, but that wouldn’t be true. There are signs of a great malaise in this country, and it is the government, and the people, who are feeling it and who are causing it.

  We live in a period of increasing polarization, between black and white, between young and old, between city and country, between political right and left. The government’s role should be to minimize and try to eliminate this condition, but it seems to be doing everything possible to exacerbate it.

  I think this must stop, and I think it must stop soon. If it doesn’t, either the country will blow apart or we’ll be living in a police state. And my Irish ancestors wouldn’t like that.

  Vandermeer leaned back in his Executive Swivel Rocker and laced his hands behind his head. For a couple of minutes he stared up at St. Yves, who stood in front of his desk, without saying anything. Then he leaned forward and the chair popped back up to work position. “You’re sure?” he asked.

  “Quite sure,” St. Yves said. “Our routine checking was bound to pay off sooner or later. We’ve found the leak.”

  “The President will be pleased,” Vandermeer said. “Hell, hell be overjoyed. You may get a pair of cufflinks for this.”

  “Right under
our noses all the time,” St. Yves said. “It was—”

  Vandermeer raised a restraining hand. “I don’t want to know,” he said, removing his glasses and sighing wearily before he looked up at St. Yves. “Just get rid of the son of a bitch.”

  “Right,” St. Yves said. He returned to his own office and picked up the phone.

  FEDERAL COURTHOUSE BOMBED

  BY BELINDA CHOMSKI

  Special to The New York Times

  SAN FRANCISCO, March 1—

  A bomb went off at eight o’clock Friday morning in a downstairs washroom of the Federal Courthouse at 450 Golden Gate Avenue in downtown San Francisco. Several people entering the building at the time suffered minor injuries and Mrs. Edith McCabe, a clerk of the court, was rushed to San Francisco General Hospital for treatment of a serious head wound.

  A group calling itself the People’s Revolutionary Brigade took credit for the blast in a phone call to the Berkeley Barb, a counterculture weekly newspaper, which was received apparently only a minute or so after the bomb went off. The PRB called the blast an act of war against the “totalitarian pig fascist government.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  There was nothing in the world for George Warren but the car in front of him on the twisting road: the hunter and his prey. He goosed his engine and flicked his brights on. The car in front speeded up in response. Keeping his brights on, Warren edged up and fell back, edged up and fell back, closing the gap on the straightaways, and falling back on the curves.

  The driver of the car ahead must have thought Warren some sort of idiot; only Warren knew that he was the hunter. He and those who had given him license. He edged forward, this time keeping the pace on the curve. The car ahead was handled well, but that didn’t matter. The end would be the same.

  Warren kept crowding, forcing the car ahead to speed up. Now Warren had to pay full attention to handling his Camarro through the curves. But the car ahead, pushed, was going even faster. Now a straightaway and Warren pushed harder, tailgating and forcing the car ahead up to seventy—seventy-five—eighty.