“But Communists don’t just, well, go around shooting odd people.”
“True, they prefer entire populations. But your point would not be persuasive if told to Leon Trotsky, if he had survived the second attempt on his life in 1940. The survival of General Walker is intolerable for the Communist International.”
Woodroe dug in. “Revilo, come on. I mean, there are quite a lot of anti-Communists in America who would take precedence over Ed Walker. I mean, we’ve got—in the Senate alone—we’ve got McCarran, Jenner. We’ve got J. Edgar Hoover. We’ve got MacArthur—”
Revilo held up his hand. “You argue like the editor of National Review.”
“Buckley?”
“Yes. Buckley was once one of us. I knew him well. I spent two weeks sailing with him on his boat one summer. He would typically give all the reasons why another explanation than the one that looms at us is the more reasonable one. Buckley was my guest, just two years ago, sitting where you are seated, a month or two after the insidious attack on the John Birch Society was published in his magazine. He was very jolly, that is his manner, you know—”
“I have never met him.”
“He said to me, ‘Revilo, why would we publish our dissent on the John Birch Society, except that we thought it true and helpful?’
“I said to him”—Revilo was speaking calmly, and with great precision—“I said to him, ‘I can think of three reasons.’ Of course, he asked me what they were.
“‘Number one,’ I said, ‘is the possibility that National Review was paid a large sum of money in return for denouncing the Society.’
“He asked, ‘What is your explanation number two?’
“‘A second explanation,’ I said to Buckley, ‘is that you were forced to take that position by the directors of National Review, Inc.’
“He smiled at me, as if the two explanations were too implausible even to dwell upon. He asked what was explanation number three?
“I told it to him. In as many words: ‘Explanation number three, Bill, is that you are actually on the other side.’”
The telephone rang. Revilo rose to answer it in the kitchen.
He came back. “That was Grace. She is at the meeting of her chapter, and they have begged her to bring me there to discuss the shooting yesterday. I’m sorry, but I have no alternative.”
From his correspondence tray, he took out a copy of American Opinion. “This just arrived. You can take it up with you. I will of course see you in the morning. Either I, or Grace if your flight leaves when I am teaching, will drive you to the airport. I am very pleased to meet you.”
Woodroe thanked him.
He yearned to use the telephone, to talk with Theo. To talk with Lee. To talk about his evenings, yesterday’s and today’s.
He looked hard at the telephone in the living room and spotted the recording device alongside.
So he took his copy of American Opinion upstairs. And, using his notepad, he wrote out a letter to Professor Romney. He spent a half hour on it, pouring out his thoughts and experiences. He told him that he had been there when the shot was fired, told him the sequence of Revilo Oliver’s conversation. He thought to ask, in his postscript, about the fate of Mount Olympus. “I’ll try to come soon to visit you.”
34
WOODROE FELT HE HAD BEEN away from New York more than just three days. He went from LaGuardia right to the JBS office. Tish, his secretary, was ready for him. “Murray Kempton called. He heard you were in Dallas with General Walker on Wednesday. Wants to talk with you. . . . The chapter head in Buffalo wants you up there to address their meeting, you pick a day, but give them at least a week’s notice. . . . Marvin Liebman called. He’ll set up a lunch with a couple of the National Review people, just say when. . . . Helena Crowder called, she was very happy, Woody.” Tish looked down at her pad. “She said, ‘Daugherty came through.’ She said you’d understand. . . . You’re to call Leonora.”
Woodroe went to his desk and started in. Reaching Lee, he told her he’d be at the apartment before 7 P.M. “I’ll bring the cake,” he said, but a little lifelessly.
When he showed up at Apartment 11E, he didn’t have to use his key. His elbow against the buzzer, she was quickly there, and threw her arms around him. Like old times, he had to put down his cake and wine.
She walked him to the sofa. “You sounded bad.”
“It didn’t really hit me till very late last night. The bullet missed General Walker by only a couple of inches. So it was nowhere near me. Just, maybe, thirty-six inches. I’ve never been shot at before—Wait, what am I saying!”
“You have been shot at before?”
“Yeah. Shot at, and hit. In the hip. And had my bandage changed by Vice President Richard Nixon. . . . I’m letting off steam. But I don’t much feel like talking about it. But I will talk about it. And I’ll tell you also what I was doing before they shot at me, if you want. But maybe let’s have a drink first. I think I have a chill.”
“Who’s they? Who shot at you?” Leonora went to the refrigerator for ice.
“I’m talking about the Hungarian Communists at the Andau Bridge. They were trying to block the refugees at that little exit point. Finally they succeeded by blowing up the bridge. We had got to the safe side, on the Austrian bank. My Hungarian buddy then shot at them. They shot back. They got both of us, him through the head.”
“And what were you doing before they shot at you?”
He took a swig of his drink. “I was trying to find my lady, but she was busy betraying her countrymen.”
“What do you mean, ‘your lady’?”
“I loved her just so very much, Lee. A week earlier she had taken my cherry, in her tiny farmhouse, while we applauded the radio and the talk of an anti-Communist revolution. I went back to look for her almost every day, bicycling from Andau, where I worked, back across the bridge to Hungary, looking for her. I never did see her again. I suppose she’s alive. That was six and a half years ago. Maybe she’s Commissar of Youth, in charge of coping with Hungarian virgins. One at a time.”
“Ease off, Woody.”
“Sorry.”
“Do you want to talk any more about—your lady?”
“Not really.”
“Then we won’t. There’s that kind of thing happening in non-Communist countries too. No, not that kind of thing, the kind of thing you’re talking about. What I mean is . . . Let’s just call it Sex. That’s what’s going on.”
“You’ve got to do better than that. There’s that kind of thing going on in every block of New York City.”
“I’m talking 36 East Thirty-sixth Street.”
Woodroe put down his drink.
“Miss Rand? Nathaniel?”
“Look, let me just tell you what happened. Two nights ago, the night you were with General Walker, I had dinner with Leonard Peikoff at Jack Dempsey’s on Broadway. We had a pretty quick meal, Peikoff-style, and he got up to go just when my coffee was being served. I said, ‘You go ahead, Leonard. I’ll finish up and then leave.’
“I couldn’t see down the other end of the bar, but as soon as Leonard was gone, Frank O’Connor walked over. He said—you don’t know Frank; he’s that way, timid, polite—he said could he sit down? I said of course.
“Well, three drinks later, which was I don’t know how many drinks after his first drink that day, he was talking about Ayn and about Nathaniel, and suddenly I put it together.” Woodroe stared at her and started to speak. She stopped him.
“It was hard enough to imagine, but harder to believe. He didn’t say it in just that many words—he wouldn’t have been able to say the cow jumped over the moon in just that many words. But I got to where I knew exactly what he was saying—that he had found out, that afternoon, that Ayn and Nathaniel are lovers. And that they... do it at Thirty-sixth Street. And that Barbara knows about it. Oh yes, and that if Frank protested, he would be out on his ear, and would I like someday to go up to his studio and see his paintings?”
&nbs
p; “Oh my God.”
They were silent.
“A lot of people stop by at Dempsey’s,” Woodroe said.
“Woody, I don’t think he’d have told anybody else at Dempsey’s about it. I can’t imagine he has told anybody anywhere. I’m a girl, an insider at the Institute, assistant to Barbara Branden, and he needed to tell somebody. He had had a lot to drink. In vino veritas. Though God knows, the whole business is unimaginable. Woody, what is unimaginable is that he’d tell it to anybody who would pass the word on to Ayn.”
“Why would he tell you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if, the next day, he even knew he had told me.”
Woodroe said nothing, opening distractedly that day’s New York Times on his lap. Then, “What does this do to your... understanding of objectivism?”
“It does something to it, though I’m not sure what. I guess Ayn is doing self-fulfillment.” She looked up sharply. Would Woodroe release a smile of derision? “Woody, let’s listen to Milton Berle on television. He’s on at eight. Maybe he’ll joke about—”
“Life. That’s a good subject to joke about.”
Woodroe put down the paper and went to the kitchen to make the salad, his regular assignment at Apartment 11E.
BOOK FOUR
35
IT WAS NOVEMBER 10, 1963. Attorney General Robert Kennedy sat in the Situation Room at the White House with press chief Pierre Salinger and presidential aide Dave Powers. The question pending was what would be the city-by-city itinerary of the president’s projected foray to the South.
The attorney general was not in a playful mood. “The American people are all for Jack. Right. But listen hard. The Roper poll published last week tells us that 59 percent of American voters say they voted for Jack in 1960. Great! Except only 49.7 percent of American voters actually did!”
“Things are going fine,” political expert Dave Powers said. “Almost everywhere. The problem is the South. And it is a problem, Bobby. A lot hangs on the presidential visit we’re talking about, Florida and Texas. There are plenty of people out there who are steamed up about the whole Vietnam business and the assassination of Diem—”
“You’re talking about the right-wingers—”
“Yeah. But the Republican Party is—looks like—it might become a right-wing party.”
“You discounting Rockefeller? Scotty Reston wrote a couple of days ago that Rockefeller had the same chance of missing out on the Republican nomination in San Francisco next summer that he has of going broke.”
“That’s funny,” Powers said. “James Reston extending his powerful hands over history through his column in the New York Times and decreeing what will happen within the GOP. But—”
“We could beat the shit out of Rockefeller,” Bobby mused.
“I think that’s right,” Powers said. “But there’s a lot of feeling out there for Goldwater, and I personally don’t think Reston’s right, that Goldwater can just be counted out with Rockefeller on the scene.”
“Hang on.” Attorney General Robert Kennedy reached into his briefcase and pulled out a memo from his brother. Scrawled on top in JFK’s handwriting were the words, “Bobby, have a look at this. I don’t like it.”
The presidential note had been written over a Xeroxed sheet reproducing a page from the Congressional Quarterly. The Quarterly reported an AP poll of the Republican delegates who had officiated at the 1960 convention. They had been asked by the pollster, Who did they think would be nominated at the San Francisco Republican convention next year?
“Sixty-five percent of the delegates,” Bobby read from the text, “predict that Rockefeller will be nominated. But get this. Seventy-two percent said they’d prefer to see Goldwater nominated.” He tapped his fingers on the table. “Goldwater. Just imagine that. Barry Goldwater. Goldwater is, like—a Birchite. Might as well be a member of the Society.”
“Naw,” Pierre Salinger said. “He just plays around with them. I mean, any GOP politician coming out of Phoenix has to be nice to the Birchers.”
“We’ve got to do two things. Get the word out to our people that the Republican Party is in the hands of the Radical Right. At the same time, pressure the GOP not to let in the Radical Right. We don’t want them nominating Goldwater.”
Salinger said, “Circulate the Len Nadasdy letter. Remember? He was head of the Young Republican Federation. After he lost out to the Goldwater Right this summer, he wrote a letter to Goldwater and sent a copy of it to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He urged Goldwater to disown the radicals in the Republican Party before it was too late. He said”—Salinger read from his file—“ ‘Why not do it now, disown the radicals, openly and clearly, rather than waiting until Rockefeller or, even worse, Kennedy forces you to do it in the heat of the campaign?’”
“There’s plenty of ammunition out there we can use,” Powers said. “The report by California’s Stanley Mosk on the John Birch Society has been leaked to the New York Times, and to friendly people in this part of the world”—he smiled, a little sheepishly—“and the New York Times Magazine is going with it on Sunday.”
“I haven’t seen that,” the attorney general said. “Let me have it.”
Powers handed over a galley. Kennedy ran his eyes down the article denouncing the Society and hinting that it had a death hold on the GOP. Turning a page while humming a song, he said, “This is good stuff. The president should have this. Hang on.” He picked up the telephone and rang the appointments secretary. “Ken, the president got anybody with him right now? . . . Good. Keep other people out. I’m coming in.” He put down the phone.
“I’ll take this upstairs. Wait here, guys.”
He was back in a few minutes.
“He liked that. The president liked that. Now, Barry Goldwater can be mean, we’re finding out. Pierre, did you see what Goldwater said at the western GOP meeting, the one in June?”
Salinger shook his head.
“Goddammit, I have to act as a file clerk for the press secretary?” Bobby picked up the phone again. “Get me Elmer Horowitz. . . . Elmer, bring me, to the Situation Room, the file on Goldwater’s speech at the western conference.”
In a minute he had it. He opened it and turned a page. “Here it is. I’ll read the part I’m looking for. ‘Not long ago, Senator John Kennedy stated bluntly that the American people had gone soft. I am glad to discover he has finally recognized that government policies which create dependent citizens inevitably rob a nation and its people of both moral and physical strength.’”
“That’s mean,” Powers agreed. “Still, I’m saying: We’re not going to be in a race against Goldwater in 1964; it’ll be Rockefeller. But we should prepare for all possibilities.” Powers returned to his point. “We’ve got to make a bigger effort in the South. Bill Rusher of National Review—he was very prominent in the conservative takeover of the Young Republicans in San Francisco—Rusher has quoted one southern senator in his magazine, didn’t say who he was, but I think we could guess without any trouble. Quoted this senator as saying, ‘Goldwater and Goldwater alone can carry enough southern and border states to offset the inevitable Kennedy conquests in the big industrial states of the North and still stand a chance of winning the election.’ That’s what Rusher reported to the YR Council. Besides”—he looked up at the head of the table—“in Dallas, Bobby, we’ve got a ton of millionaires, and a lot of them are going to come to any lunch or dinner that’s held there featuring the president of the United States.”
Bobby Kennedy reflected on it.
He got up from his chair. “Okay,” he said to Salinger. “After Florida, schedule Dallas.”
36
LEONORA WAS AT THE SHERRY Netherlands in New York, helping to prepare for the twelfth of Nathaniel Branden’s twenty scheduled lectures. She had adjusted the two chairs at the head of the room to just where, she knew, Miss Rand liked them, hers and Nathaniel’s. Chester, the hotel clerk she worked with, called out to her from the other end of the room. “M
iss Pound. Miss Pound!” Chester ran down the aisle between the chairs, some of them still banked against the wall, and Lee found herself all but running toward him. Out of breath, he told her President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.
“Is he dead, Chester?”
“He’s been taken to the hospital. But . . . they think he’s dead.”
Lee thought quickly. “Unless I call you in fifteen minutes, cancel the seminar.”
She needed to get to Woodroe.
His phone was busy. She winced. She tried to assemble her thoughts. The Dallas people reviled President Kennedy, at least a lot of them did. And they had all but assaulted Adlai Stevenson a few weeks ago when he was in town lecturing on the United Nations, to which he was U.S. ambassador. Woodroe, as a Bircher, was an upfront right-winger. He had to be protected. She dialed again. Still busy.
First things first. She dialed the NBI number, which, thank God, answered. It was Barbara.
“Barbara, I told them at the hotel the seminar would be canceled unless we called back—”
“Lee, what’s going on?”
She didn’t know?
On the other hand, it had been only, what, three minutes since Chester had given her the news? And he didn’t know for sure whether the president was dead.
Barbara flicked on the television in her office. “I’ve got it now on TV. Hang on. . . . Yes.” There was a quaver in her voice. “Kennedy is dead.” Another pause and, “Yes. Of course we’ll cancel the seminar. I’ll get hold of Nathaniel. He’s with . . . Ayn.”
One more call to the JBS office; still busy. Lee gave up. She’d go there. Walk the nine blocks. Unless a cab passed by, and one did.
By the time she got to the seventh-floor office she was angry.
“Don’t you ever get off the phone?” she said, striding by Tish, who had operator’s earphones on.
Getting It Right Page 19
