Watergate

by Thomas Mallon

  Richardson turned off the television; there was nothing to be gained from any attempt to read Gerald Ford’s blank face. He went back to his Laysan duck, but the phone rang almost as soon as he picked up the brush.

  “I have the White House on the line,” said the hotel operator.

  “Thank you,” said Richardson.

  “Good morning, Elliot. Did I wake you?”

  To Richardson’s distress, his call was being returned by Al Haig, who he’d hoped had flown off into exile with Nixon. But, of course, good old suggestible Jerry had decided that Haig should stay on for a bit as chief of staff.

  “Not at all,” answered Richardson. “I was just watching a replay of the president’s farewell. I’ve rarely been so moved.”

  “Really.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Richardson, wondering how he and Darman were going to get past this enormous, unexpected stumbling block. Would Haig be around for another week? Through the whole VP selection?

  “Well,” said the general, “I’ve got to get into the East Room, but I saw that you’d called and just wanted to let you know that your name is certainly being very much mentioned around here.”

  “Is it? That’s very flattering, Al.”

  “Yes, for ambassador to England. We’ll be in touch.”

  Haig hung up the phone. Richardson looked out the window, regarding the sun on the coconuts, marooned in the paradise of his reputation.

  “The flight plan says we’ll be passing over Liberal, Kansas,” Frank Gannon informed Diane Sawyer. “Should we waggle our wings?”

  “We’re also supposed to go over Gallup, New Mexico,” she pointed out. “What do we do there? ‘Experience a sudden loss of altitude’?”

  As Air Force One flew west, the two weary young staffers kept up the gallows humor, no matter that the trapdoor had already dropped. It was the same with the president, who had come aboard shockingly tired but managed to observe that the back of the cabin “smelled a lot better than usual,” now that it was free of the press. Ziegler had succeeded in keeping them off this final flight from Washington to San Clemente.

  Only thirty-four passengers were traveling, and most of them remembered to look at their watches as twelve noon EDT arrived and, somewhere over Jefferson City, Missouri, Nixon ceased to be president. All chatter stopped for a long moment. “Air Force Once,” someone finally muttered. No one had the heart to be wearing the flight jackets they used to don as status symbols. Nixon himself was in a sport coat, inside his cabin, taking the first sip of a martini with Ziegler.

  The stewards began serving shrimp cocktail and prime rib a little ahead of schedule. Some people couldn’t summon the energy, or stomach, for more than a couple of bites. In Haldeman’s day, the plane’s mood had been especially severe, but it hadn’t lightened all that much with his departure. The blue-gray decor of the new aircraft, which became available after the ’72 election, suggested a submarine traveling at a low, serious depth. One almost expected to hear the pinging of sonar.

  When Ziegler emerged from the president’s cabin, Steve Bull read his anxious expression, and asked, “Another call?”

  The press secretary shook his head, knowing that Bull referred to Haldeman’s continual pleas for a last-minute double pardon of the Watergate conspirators and Vietnam draft evaders. “No,” he said, “I’ve got to talk to you about El Toro.” A large crowd was apparently forming at the marine air base where they’d be landing. It was friendly, to be sure, but so big that the now former president might feel required to address it. “And I’m a little worried about her,” said Ziegler, pointing to the first lady’s small, private cabin.

  Inside it, Pat sat behind a little writing table, knowing that Dick was on the other side of the thin wall. She wanted to lie down on the narrow bed but had decided she should use the time to write some thank-you notes. And yet, when she saw the two stacks of available stationery, she didn’t have the heart to use either. One sported a letterhead saying “The White House,” where they no longer lived, and the other was embossed with the words “Air Force One,” which this plane hadn’t been for twenty minutes. She decided she had her excuse not to work. She swept both piles of stationery into the trash basket—as wasteful a gesture as she’d allowed herself in the last five years—leaving only her untouched lunch and a pack of cigarettes on the desk.

  Closing her eyes, she thought again of what she’d seen on the South Lawn after boarding the helicopter: three soldiers rolling up the red carpet and hanging on to their dress caps against the chop of the rotors. It looked as if they were wrapping up a corpse. She’d heard herself say, “It’s so sad, it’s so sad,” as the helicopter rose above the Ellipse, and she had scarcely said a word since. She’d spent the whole flight in this tiny cabin.

  It was comfortable enough, but she preferred the old plane, even with its assassination taint. It had had bright desert colors, and every time she stepped onto it she would remember the day in ’68, just after the election, when they’d come aboard and Dick had twirled her in his arms, thinking no one was looking.

  She regarded the blank, greenish screen of the little Sony TV in here and experienced a curious moment of joy, thinking that her own face might never again appear on any television, anywhere. She tried to prolong the thought, to comfort herself with it, but there was one more thing she had to do before she could even pretend to relax.

  She opened the door and stuck her head into the aisle, catching the eye of Colonel Brennan, who came forward immediately.

  “I’d like to place a call,” she said, handing him a slip of paper with the number.

  “Right away, ma’am.”

  She closed the door, sat back down, and waited for the phone to ring. Once she picked it up, she realized that the signal was terrible; the roar of white noise sounded like the crowds in Cairo.

  “What?” she asked, louder than she liked. “What did you say?” She’d only caught a word or two.

  Then Tom Garahan’s voice again broke through, a little more clearly this time: “I said you’re heading in the wrong direction!”

  “Oh!” she cried, hoping he would hear her laugh. “For a long time now!”

  “What?”

  “—long time now—”

  And then, suddenly, the signal cleared, as if the static had been turbulence and the pilot had just found a calm airstream.

  “They’re waiting for you,” said Tom, sounding almost as if he were in the cabin.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “The crowd where you’re going to land. There are thousands of them there already, singing ‘God Bless America.’ ”

  She took a cigarette from the pack. She could feel the tears and nausea coming. She could not do it, not after this morning’s televised torture in the East Room. And not after this, which was killing her all over again.

  “The screen keeps shifting back and forth between there and Washington,” Tom explained.

  “Turn it off, please.”

  She could hear the click, after he got up from the couch in the Madison Avenue apartment.

  “I sent you something,” she said, when Tom returned to the line.

  “I already got it, this morning.”

  She’d written him Tuesday night, after Rose had told her there was no turning back.

  “Good for the Post Office,” she said.

  “For delivering news like that?”

  “Tom … you understand.”

  “I understand. In fact I’ve already carried out your instructions.”

  She had sent him back the gold shamrock. She’d told him not to keep it but to go to Schrafft’s and leave it—a shiny, mysterious piece of luck, for someone else to find—on the table where they’d first sat together. The gentleman said to tell you that he’s an independent, but that everybody likes apple pie.

  “Schrafft’s has seen better days,” Tom informed her.

  “So have I.”

  “I offered it up, Victoria.”

  He had onc
e explained the phrase to her. It was what the Catholics do with any sorrows and trials that had to be borne: accept the burden; carry it; and make a gift of the labor to God. She’d asked Tom why they couldn’t make an offering of joy, and he’d replied, “Are you sure you’re really even half-Irish?”

  “I offered up the joy,” he now told her.

  She could no longer walk between two fires, one steady and warm, the other a wild alternation of blaze-ups and gutterings that now looked on the verge of going out for good. But only the second truly needed her tending. She did not know what lay ahead—certainly not joy—and she doubted her strength to endure it, let alone offer it up, but she knew where she had to be.

  “Thank you, Roger.” She felt relief and sadness, a cold wave of each crashing into the other.

  Oh, Tom!

  She had gotten through this, too.

  She realized from the funny blank buzz on the line that the connection had cut out, the way it sometimes did at this altitude. The communications man came on: “Mrs. Nixon, we’re sorry; the call dropped. I’ll try it again.”

  “That’s okay. We were finished.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  She hung up, safe in the knowledge that there was no recording of the conversation: Johnson had taped every call to and from Air Force One, but Dick had had the system removed after taking office and had left the jet unwired when, two years later, everything else got tapped. The mystery of this exception was one more thing she intended never to think about once they were back in their own house.

  After the plane had traveled another ten minutes, another hundred miles west, she knocked on the door of Dick’s cabin. Ziegler opened the door and cleared out instantly.

  Her husband looked so hollowed out that the swivel chair he sat in seemed like some prescribed medical appliance. She spotted the Teddy Roosevelt book on the table, wondering who’d brought it along after Dick had used it in the East Room.

  “Are you sure it’s ours?” she asked, pointing to it. “Not the White House library’s?”

  “Yes. Don’t you recognize it?”

  “Sort of. I’m just afraid they’ll accuse us of stealing that, too.” She took the seat beside him. “How’s the leg?”

  “All right for the moment.”

  “It ought to be up.” She pulled the hassock toward him, and as she leaned over to do so their faces came closer. Each could see how much the other had been crying.

  “What’d you think of what I said?” he asked. “You couldn’t really call it a speech.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I know you didn’t want the cameras there.”

  “No,” she said softly. “But I realized once you started that it would have been just as hard without them. Did you see Herb Stein?”

  “Yeah.” The stolid economist’s eyes had been gushing tears in the East Room. “I almost broke down watching him,” said Nixon. He paused. “You know, that’s why I mentioned my mother and my old man instead of you and the girls. I was afraid you’d break down, too.”

  “Oh, you don’t need to tell me that!” She lightly touched his knee. “They’re the only ones who wouldn’t get it.” She pointed in the direction of where the press used to be.

  “I’m so … mystified!” He groped for this word she couldn’t remember him ever using, and once he found it he started to sob. “I don’t know how it happened, how it began. Half the time I hear myself on the tapes I realize that I’m barely remembering who works for who over at the Committee. I hear myself acting like I know more than I do—pretending to be on top of the thing so I don’t embarrass myself with whoever’s in the room—especially Ehrlichman. Christ, I can’t now apologize for what I can barely understand! I mean, if Mitchell and Martha—”

  “Dick,” she interrupted, patting his swollen knee. “You’re going to make yourself sick.” Martha, the most ancient of history, headed the list of things she would never think about again.

  He closed his eyes and the sobs let up, at least for a moment. The tears continued down his face, as copious as the sweat that had drenched his suit jacket last night.

  She was worried, even with the engine noise, that someone would hear him, the way she’d worried when he wept on the train going through Oregon in ’52. She was alarmed by how bad he looked, and didn’t know how he could put himself out in front of another crowd an hour from now. She wanted him to stop crying, the way she’d made herself stop this morning.

  “Dick,” she whispered, taking his hand.

  He was looking at her now, wanting to tell her that he loved her. She knew that he couldn’t, no more than he could make himself ask if she loved him. For an awful second she feared he would say, “I hope I haven’t let you down,” as if she were one more congressman from Nebraska. But he knew better than to try that with her.

  She rubbed her thumb back and forth across the top of his hand, soothing him, trying to change the subject. “You can’t say this isn’t a smooth ride. Remember that first one?”

  He nodded, like a child subsiding from a tantrum. He knew what she was referring to: their first plane trip together, after the ’48 election, flying east to west, the four of them, with both the girls in little bonnets. Six prop flights to get them from Washington to California. Julie’s infant ears hurt each time they touched down; but the baby’s mother never lost her temper, or so much as a pair of gloves, the whole trip.

  She looked at him now, a sight so painful she couldn’t conjure any image from the happier years behind them. She could only see the months ahead—the encouragements, the scoldings, the jokes and stratagems it would take to keep him alive, at home or in prison. That would be her work, and she would offer it up with whatever tenderness she had in her. It was the one thing left for her to do, and she would be worthy of it.

  “Do you love me?”

  Suddenly the words were out of him, making her flinch, like a firecracker thrown during a motorcade. He wanted her to answer a question he hadn’t asked in more than thirty years, since before those propeller flights. She leaned over to kiss his forehead, trying to find words to use herself, and they came to her, from all the campaign banners they had walked under two years ago, on their way toward this moment, this ruin. “Now more than ever,” she whispered.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  SEPTEMBER 8, 1974

  WASHINGTON, D.C., AND FORT HOLABIRD, MARYLAND

  Clarine had left Washington five days ago. “Gone to Spain, darlin’ Hound,” was all she’d written, near the word “MOOT” on the crinkled envelope she left with the doorman at Watergate West. LaRue suspected he would never see her again.

  He had no idea whether she had read the envelope’s contents; whether the original sealing was intact or if the flap had been reglued. He had still not opened it himself, let alone read whatever was inside, though he’d carried it around since Tuesday, sometimes thinking of it as his fate and sometimes as just a poor papery trace of Larrie.

  He had it with him even now, at the counter in the waffle shop across from Ford’s Theatre. He’d driven downtown, passing a Sunday-morning crowd outside St. John’s. Word must have gotten out that the new president would be attending services. Well, he had plenty to pray about, thought LaRue.

  Wishing he had some bourbon instead of maple syrup to pour over them, LaRue was fortifying himself with a large plate of waffles before he headed off to see Magruder for the first time since that hour in the neighbor’s driveway a year and a half ago. Jeb had been asking for a visit ever since June, but Allenwood, the first place he’d been incarcerated, had said no: they didn’t want two Watergate guys having the chance to align their stories, never mind that both of them had already pled guilty and testified in public to every part of the scandal’s minutiae.

  But at Holabird, where Jeb had just been transferred, things were different. The old fort up in Baltimore was getting ready to shut down, and fewer than eighteen prisoners remained on its grounds, doing their
own cooking and wearing their own clothes. A whole little Watergate platoon was now stashed there in advance of the Mitchell trial: Kalmbach and Colson were in residence along with Magruder, and Dean himself had lately arrived. With all of them already living and talking together, the authorities hardly cared if LaRue came to shoot the Sunday breeze. One of the marshals had even told Jeb he’d be happy to take him to his son’s birthday party when the boy’s big day came—and then drive him back in time for lockdown.

  Cozy as it all might sound, LaRue was not looking forward to the reunion. He lingered over his coffee and the Post before paying his check and hitting the road. He kept the envelope on the passenger seat as he drove. It traveled with him like a passport: if he feared opening it, he was also by now afraid to be without it. Next to it sat a box of peanut brittle, something Clarine had suggested as a present for Magruder’s sweet tooth, before she took off.

  LaRue had once told Jeb about Larrie—during the high-water bosom-buddy days of “Magrue.” In the early spring of ’72, he and Jeb had spent a long evening at a booth in Billy Martin’s Georgetown tavern, the same wooden nook where John F. Kennedy was said to have popped the question to Jackie. LaRue had been sporting a double glow of booze and well-being, knowing the latter wouldn’t last, that he would soon enough be remembering the dark spot at his center, the duck blind he carried inside. And yet, before all that took over, before he got as sweaty as the Old Man during a big speech, he’d let himself feel the bourbon and contentment and tell Jeb all about the affair with Clarine—almost the whole story, from the Jackson law office to the dude ranch and beyond. He’d told him he met her because he needed help with some legal technicalities after the hunting accident, not that there’d been an investigation; and he’d never mentioned this letter now beside him on the passenger seat. But he did tell him how the later flamingly liberal Larrie had gone to work for the DNC, which had gotten them laughing about life’s ironies and tilted the conversation back to the usual campaign bullshit.

  He’d wondered for days now whether Clarine had left because of something inside the envelope. Had she been repelled to find out for certain what she’d for so long been able to accept as mere possibility?