The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America

by Michael Kurland

  O. That damned Roosevelt and his four terms.

  P. I’ve got some big things going for this country. A big game plan. But I need Arnold in. Then he appoints me Secretary of State, and puts you two in the Cabinet, and goes back to his comic books.

  (About a minute of conversation was lost here while the tape was changed)

  V. …him. So we’d better either get someone else or develop another game plan.

  O. Or get rid of Ryan.

  P. That’s another game plan.

  V. It wouldn’t do any good. Not in the long run.

  P. We’re only interested in the run that ends in November at the polls.

  V. Yes, sir. That’s what I’m talking about. The Democrats have several people to replace Ryan. And we’re still stuck with Arnold.

  O. It sounds like we have to replace both Ryan and Arnold.

  P. Yes. The perfect play. But at just the right time. Not too soon for them or too late for us. But we’d have to have a replacement ready.

  V. Not necessarily.

  P. No? Let me hear your thinking on that.…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Stretching like a thin green arm through Washington, Rock Creek Park separates governmental Washington from the maze of bedroom communities to the north and northwest. In part clipped and manicured, and in part as wild and unmanaged as when the Algonquin Indians fished the now-polluted waters of Rock Creek and hunted through the present volleyball courts and bicycle paths of the park itself, Rock Creek Park is a favorite with those outdoors-lovers who can’t get further out of town.

  Kit Young and Miriam Kassel tramped along one of the park’s hiking trails, a knapsack over Kit’s shoulder and a blanket roll over Miriam’s, looking for the perfect place to picnic.

  “This is it, I think,” Kit said, indicating a smooth hump of rock to the right surrounded by boxwoods and thick brush. “If there’s a clearing around on the other side of that rock, it’s the place.”

  “It certainly is secluded,” Miriam said dubiously, staring at the thick bushes. “Are you sure that’s not poison ivy?”

  “Ask me in about six hours,” Kit said. “That’s the only way I can tell.”

  “Don’t you know what poison ivy looks like?”

  “Sure, its got waxy green leaves—or is that poison sumac? And sometimes it has red berries which you’re not supposed to eat.” He fought his way into the bushes on the far side of the rock. “Look—here’s a path.”

  “If this is a path,” Miriam said, pushing in behind him, “I’m a camel. And I won’t mention what you are.”

  “Well, a track,” Kit said. He carefully held the branches aside as he moved so they wouldn’t snap back in Miriam’s face. After a minute’s hard work, the track became an honest path, leading to a small, semihidden clearing surrounded by bushes and rocks, all of fifty feet off the hiking trail.

  “Well,” Miriam said, brushing herself off and looking around. “I certainly hope this is the place. If it isn’t, Aaron will never find us.”

  “If so, it’s his fault and none of my own,” Kit said. “We followed his instructions and ended up here, and so should he.”

  “I hope so,” Miriam said, spreading the blanket over an offending bit of brown earth that poked its way through the grass cover. “Would you eliminate those, ah, artifacts over there? They offend my esthetic sense of picnic.”

  Kit picked up the empty beer cans that littered one side of the clearing and chucked them deeper into the surrounding bush. Then he handed Miriam the knapsack and helped her get the food out and into some semblance of order in one corner of the blanket.

  A few minutes later, Aaron Adams appeared over the top of a rock and slid down to join them. “Hi, all,” he said.

  “Welcome,” Miriam told him.

  He handed her a brown paper bag. “My contribution,” he said.

  Miriam opened the bag and removed a pair of plastic wrapped globs. “Chopped liver,” she said. “And—what’s this?—deviled eggs! How nice.”

  “I won’t tell George that you called his pâté chopped liver,” Adams said, smiling. He dropped cross-legged to the grass next to the blanket. “Did you know you were being followed?”

  “What?” Kit said. He glanced back at the brush they had pushed through. “You’re kidding!”

  “Nope. I happened to come along a bit behind you, and I was just in position to catch two gentlemen in gray suits tippy-toeing through the underbrush after you, trying to look casual.”

  “Where are they now?” Miriam said, making an effort not to look around.

  “If you look over those rocks to your right,” Adams said, shifting his eyes toward the indicated direction, “you’ll see a higher, kind of shoe-shaped rock behind. One of them is, even now, precariously perched atop the shoe.”

  “Watching us?” Miriam asked.

  “I should assume so, certainly.”

  “What should we do?”

  Adams turned to Kit and allowed the corners of his mouth to turn up. “What would you suggest?” he asked.

  “Eat lunch,” Kit said. “I’m hungry.”

  “But they’re watching us,” Miriam said. Her voice rose slightly. “There are two men out there in business suits watching us!”

  “And they’ll see three friends eating a picnic lunch and talking,” Kit said. “Nothing to get alarmed about. Nothing subversive. Nothing to report.” He took Miriam’s hand, trying to give some empathetic force to the gesture while still letting it look casual to a distant observer. It does get to you, he thought wryly. “It’s probably just a routine check,” he told Miriam. “Everyone’s always having their security clearance updated. The President’s a bug on stopping leaks before they start. So room sixteen follows people around at random whenever they have a couple of spare men. They’re hoping to catch someone walking into the Russian Embassy. Or, even worse, the editorial offices of the New York Times. It’s meaningless.”

  “What are they going to think, seeing us together?” Miriam demanded.

  “You have a guilty conscience,” Kit told her. “You and I know why we’re meeting Aaron here, but they don’t.”

  “What is this country coming to,” Adams said, “when three old friends are nervous about meeting openly in a public park? I ask only metaphorically. What this country is coming to is one of the things we’re here to discuss.”

  “Here,” Miriam said. “Rolls and cold cuts, cheese, butter, knife, um, potato salad, coffee, paper cups, salt and pepper, wine, plastic glasses. Make and pour your own.”

  Kit wrapped some assorted cold cuts around a hunk of cheese and thrust the mass into the heart of a roll. He twisted around to face Adams. “Think they can hear us?”

  “Not unless they have the lunch bugged,” Adams said. He poured himself a glass of wine. “Excellent idea, this. Decent wine, too.”

  “Let’s talk,” Kit said.

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Adams agreed. “But keep it casual, or at least keep it looking casual. Three old friends enjoying each others’ company and sliced salami.”

  “I’ve been feeding you information for months now,” Kit said, leaning back on his elbows and not looking directly at Adams. “I want to know what you’re doing with it. It’s dangerous for me, and Miriam, and probably for you to keep this up, so I want to make sure it’s worthwhile.”

  Adams regarded him steadily through his gray-tinted steel-rimmed glasses. “You know what I do with the information you supply,” he said. “Or you have a damn good idea.”

  “There’s a leak at the White House,” Kit said. “Someone is funneling information through to Kevin Ryan’s organization. I just want to make sure that it isn’t me.”

  “It isn’t,” Adams said. “You know damn well that I’m a conduit back into the Company. We both feel that they have to know what’s going on inside the White House if they’re to make sane policy decisions. Especially since this administration doesn’t seem interested in doing anything about forei
gn policy beyond racing around and grandstanding for home consumption. Your friends are very PR-conscious, but they’re not so concerned with substance.”

  “I’ve been feeling all this time,” Kit said, “that CIA is hearing what I’m telling you. And I agree: it’s necessary. But I draw the line at feeding information to Ryan.”

  “Why?” Miriam said.

  “Why?” Kit looked surprised. “Because that’s political, and I want to keep this above the political level. That should be clear.”

  “It isn’t, and that’s nonsense,” Miriam said. “Its incredible to me that anyone in government can say with a straight face that he’s above politics. And I think its unfair and immoral to consider it proper to feed information to the CIA, which is a government agency, but improper to keep a member of the Senate informed of what’s happening to the government and the country. After all, the Senate is elected by the people, and who the hell made the CIA God?”

  “You’re excited,” Kit said. “Calm down. Unclench your fists. Look like you’re on a picnic, for Christ’s sake!”

  Adams meditatively refilled his wineglass from the thermos. “It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked Miriam.

  “Me what?”

  “You what’s been feeding information to the Ryan people.”

  Miriam unclenched her fists and took several deep breaths. “Don’t look at me like that,” she told Kit. “Yes, that’s right, it was me. And it will continue to be me unless you boys find yourselves another cutout. I’m not just a dead-letter drop, you know; I’m a person. And I have a right to have some control over my destiny.”

  “But why Ryan?” Kit demanded.

  “Calm down,” Miriam said. “Your eyes are starting to bulge. We don’t want our little snoops on the hill to have anything to write down in their little notebooks, do we?”

  Kit took a deep breath, and then nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re using your judgment just as I’m using mine. I have no right to unilaterally decide that mine’s better.”

  “Incredible!” Miriam said. “Did you say that?”

  “But why Ryan?” Kit repeated.

  “Well, it’s either Ryan or Arnold. And if it’s Arnold, it’s eight more years of the same.”

  “There are other Democrats in the race,” Kit said.

  “But Ryan’s going to get the nomination; anybody can see that.”

  “True,” Adams said.

  “That’s what the President thinks,” Kit said. “And he’s not fond of the idea.”

  “Well,” Adams said, smiling, “Miriam may be doing more good than we are with our more cautious approach. If Ryan gets elected we can unravel this whole mess at our leisure and present it to the proper authorities; presumably there will again be proper authorities. And if Arnold opens his mouth wide enough to insert his shoe a couple of more times he’ll have blown the election for sure.”

  “The President isn’t allowing Arnold any more press conferences,” Kit said. “From now on he only speaks from a prepared script. They hope to stop the image erosion. That’s what Ober calls it: Arnold’s steady image erosion.”

  “Too late,” Adams said.

  “And they’ve got a big, secret master plan,” Kit said. “Vandermeer and St. Yves have worked it out.”

  “What is it?”

  “I have no idea,” Kit said. “This is the secret, and nobody has the need to know except those in on it.”

  “A big deal, eh?” Adams said thoughtfully. “Any ideas? They’ve got to be dropping hints, people always do. What direction do the hints point in?”

  “All I know is that it happens after the conventions. They expect Ryan to get the nomination. And they think they’re ready for it.”

  “Some dirt, maybe,” Adams said. “Something to smear him with.”

  Kit shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Ah, well,” Adams said. “Let’s eat our lunch. Let those boys on the rock get some good pictures for the archives.”

  “Oh!” Miriam said. “I’d forgotten—would you believe?—I’d forgotten about them.”

  “Never forget,” Adams said. “From now on always assume that they’re lurking around somewhere, just out of sight, and conduct yourself accordingly.”

  “It’s one hell of a way to live,” Miriam said.

  “Consider the alternative,” said Adams.

  EXCERPT FROM THE SPEECH GIVEN BY GENERAL OF THE ARMY HIRAM T. MacGREGOR TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF THE UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY

  Wednesday, June 2, 1976

  Someday, probably, one of you will stand up here, facing some future West Point graduating class, and you will give them the benefit of your thirty years’ experience distilled down into half an hour, much as I am expected to give you. If the statistics hold in the future as they have in the past, when one among you faces this not-yet-born class of apple-cheeked second lieutenants, half of you will have died violent deaths. Most of you still living will have long since retired and gone into some field where you can keep regular hours and have a home that stays put for more than two years at a time.

  The service will turn some of you into drunks, some of you into drug addicts, some of you into martinets who abuse the power of your rank, some of you into toadies, some of you into politicians, and some few of you into soldiers.

  It is to these last few that I address my remarks.

  I want to tell you what none of your instructors or professors have told you in the four years you’ve been here, what none of your brother officers or commandants or DA civilians or congressional committees or reserve or retired officer groups or secretaries of the Army, or of defense, or presidents of the United States, will tell you during the twenty-plus years you spend on active duty. I want to tell you what you’re doing here. And I want you to remember it all the days you wear the uniform of the United States Army.

  You are here with that stripe around your sleeve and those little gold bars on your shoulders to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

  “Oh, that,” you say, leaning back in those uncomfortable chairs, “I’ve heard that before. That’s nothing new.”

  But now let me tell you what these words mean. They mean that outside of the chain of command, as the final arbiter of every order that is issued to you and of your every official act, is a two-hundred-year-old piece of parchment. And every time you receive or give an order, or contemplate a course of action, you have to ask yourself, “Is there anything in the Constitution that would affect what I am going to do?”

  You cannot be relieved of this responsibility by any commanding officer. Indeed, it may happen that the desires—or even the direct orders—of your commanding officer may come into conflict with what you believe the Constitution tells you to do. You may be court-martialed and dismissed in disgrace, or even imprisoned, by your brother officers, who honestly believe that they are right and you are wrong. And it is easier to stand up to the fire of the enemy than to the scorn of your brother officers.

  But these are times when your belief in and adherence to the principles of that great experiment known as the Constitution of the United States may be tried early and often. Hopefully, these times shall pass, and peace and accord shall again prevail in this great nation of ours—but only if honorable men like yourselves see to it, at whatever the cost, that it does.

  But now off my hobby horse and on to cheerier topics.…

  END OF EXCERPT

  RYAN ON FIRST BALLOT

  LEADING DEMOCRATS PLEDGE SUPPORT;

  WILL CHOOSE RUNNING MATE TODAY

  —Headline, the New York Post

  Friday, July 9,1976

  ARNOLD CHOICE OF CONVENTION

  NO SURPRISES IN KANSAS CITY

  —Headline, The New York Times

  Wednesday, August 18, 1976

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  On Thursday, September 30, at a quarter past seven in the morning, limousines began arriving at the North Entrance to
the White House to discharge people attending the President’s prayer breakfast. The various senators, representatives, and important lobbyists were shown by the White House staff into the State Dining Room as they arrived.

  At seven-thirty, the President, flanked by Ober, Vandermeer, and Gildruss, entered the State Dining Room from the side door leading to the Family Dining Room and took his place at the head of the long table. His chiefs of staff took their seats at the foot, Ober and Gildruss on the left and Vandermeer on the right. Congressman Obediah Porfritt (R-Neb.), seated at the middle of the table, his back to the Healy portrait of a brooding Lincoln, kept his hands folded in his lap and wondered what he was doing there. Not that he was entirely persona non grata at the White House, but there were so many personae far more gratissimae than himself that the list seldom reached down as far as his name.

  The President seemed in splendid sorts this morning as he looked out at his assembled guests and nodded somberly. He raised his hands to the level of his chin and clasped them together in a washing gesture to be sure he had everyone’s attention. “Good morning, Senators, Congressman, gentlemen,” he said.

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” the table replied in ragged unison.

  “As most of you know,” the President said, “I’ve had these prayer breakfasts for members of my Cabinet and members of Congress several times during my years in this office. They have been smaller gatherings, held in the Family Dining Room. I think of them as attempts to commune with our Maker, whatever religion you may happen to be, and, in a very real sense, as opportunities to communicate with each other.

  “During my few remaining months in office I’m going to hold these larger gatherings on a regular basis. I think you—especially those of you who have not been to a previous breakfast—will agree that the increased sense of community, of togetherness, and of spiritual values makes the time spent well worthwhile.