by Warren Adler
“It never troubled you?” Nick asked calmly. He had begun to reach back into time, remembering Charlie during those last Kennedy months.
“Trouble me? Hell, I ate my heart out about it. But what was I to do? What would you do? I wasn’t prepared to blow my job.”
Nick listened, contempt building inside of him, not only for Phelps, but for himself. “And you sat on it for all those years?”
“What was the point? Besides, it was over, squirreled away. You’d be surprised how efficient the human mind is in rationalization.”
“And why now?”
“Because you’re asking. You really want it.” He paused. “How hard was I expected to fight?” he said quietly. “I had gotten the word. I knew the ground rules.”
He looked into Nick’s face.
“It’s safe now,” he continued. “For people like me, that is. Safe.”
Phelps watched Nick’s face for a reaction. When none came, he proceeded. “Hell, we all felt we were instruments of American policy in those days, regardless of how it went against our newspaperman’s morality. All that First Amendment stuff gets pretty gooey when they start leaning on you like that. Besides, I was a Depression baby. I had two kids.” He relit his pipe and puffed deeply, revealing his agitation.
“But the Pentagon Papers made no reference to the assassination of Diem as a CIA intrigue. It said that the deed was perpetrated by old enemies, old rivals.”
“Yes, I read it. It simply didn’t go far enough.”
“Why?”
“Because the evidence wasn’t conclusive. There were no documents showing that Diem’s assassination was engineered by the CIA.”
“Back to square one,” Nick said, finishing his beer. He felt his belly bloat.
“Not quite. Even back then, I was convinced that Henderson was the man personally sent to prepare the logistics for the assassination.”
“Supposition,” Nick said, goading him.
“The scenario went something like this. Henderson was an NSA man. He had been responsible for setting up the original South Vietnamese coding when he was in the army after World War II. That was his basic expertise, that and the language. He was literally one of the handful of men in the States who knew the language. He was deliberately sent across to manipulate the assassination. I saw him only once. He steered clear of the embassy, but since I knew what seemed to be afoot I kept my eyes on the CIA man. I followed him everywhere, a shadow.”
“Deduction, Robert. That’s all. Not proof.”
“I remember Allison. He was actually merely a go-between, a courier. He was the one who brought the message of how Diem was to be transported to his enemies. Henderson was the one who set him up.”
“That’s what Allison told us,” Nick said. “The ravings of a drunk. Besides, he won’t let himself be quoted.”
“Quote me, then,” Phelps said. “I’ll be glad, in fact, to put my by-line on it. Let them deny it.”
“If he gets up front on it, so will Allison,” Gunderstein said. “I’m convinced of that.”
“Look, Nick,” Phelps continued, “the way those birds operated they always built in what they call plausible denial. He really can’t deny he was there. He can’t deny he was with NSA. He can’t deny his intelligence connections and once the ball is in the air, others will step forward.”
“And that will be the end of Henderson’s carefully built political career, the end of his dream of the presidency.”
“So what?” Phelps said. “What kind of twisted morality could let a guy like that become President of the United States? In a pig’s ass, I say.”
“Don’t invoke morality, Phelps. Not now.”
“I’d like to make amends. It’s Christian, you know. Black sheep and all that. I was never in a position to argue the point. I had no choice. Like the Germans, I obeyed orders.”
“We’ve suddenly become a bunch of self-righteous purists,” Nick said lamely. Surely, in the light of more than a decade ago, it could not have seemed to Charlie a betrayal of principle. But why had he not told him? Could he have been ashamed?
“And the Bay of Pigs?” It came out as a cryptic retch.
“Pell knew about that, too. That’s the way they censor, Nick. We both know that. They con you by letting you in on the inside. You feel important, in the know. Then you lie for the bastards.”
“For America,” Nick said. His throat felt dry. He reached for another beer.
“Bullshit,” Phelps said.
“We’ve got to have legitimate secrets.”
“That’s what got us into all this trouble. You can’t run morality on two tracks.”
Nick could feel Martha Gates unwinding, the sense of her presence rising in the room as her body moved, her breasts jiggling in the warmth of her tight T-shirt. He knew, as he might have believed in his younger days, that it was the idea of morality, the very fiber of good motives, that was making her move, had made her move toward this idea of what journalism meant. She was still young enough not to have drunk too deeply of futility; a part of her innocence was still intact. He felt it odd that this silent youthful figure should suddenly dominate the room, making him somehow ashamed. He felt his eyes magnetize toward her, forcing her to respond.
“It’s wrong,” she said simply. “Soon you won’t be able to tell the difference between the idea you’re protecting and the idea you’re against.”
He felt admiration for her special sense of purity and the private inner glow of her conviction. Of course, in the abstract, she was correct, given that all humankind were saints. Yet it was insufferable of these young people to condemn the motives and instincts of others in another time, another environment. Nick felt a sudden need to defend Henderson or, at the very least, to give him a chance. He owed that to his conscience. As for Phelps, his contrition, his need for salvation, didn’t become his age.
“You’re making judgments years after the fact, distorting the motives. Let’s face it, a few years ago the world looked a hell of a lot different. We had just learned what Stalin had done to millions of people. It reinforced our fear of what those people were capable of doing to us. They had built the Berlin Wall. There was a Geneva Treaty to protect. People believed in our word. You could justify such activities. Diem was known to be corrupt. We hadn’t yet sent many boys to Viet Nam. Look at it from Kennedy’s point of view. The Geneva Treaty was made between governments. Was it our fault that their leadership was sick? It wasn’t as simple as divorce. There could be no divorce. We had signed for life, or so we thought.”
He felt energized by his argument, wondering about his conviction. The human mind, he thought, could rationalize almost anything.
“It’s not his motives that we’re questioning,” Gunderstein said, trying to refocus their concentration. “That’s not our business. Only the story.”
“It’s an apologia,” Phelps said contemptuously. “It was wrong then. It’s wrong now.”
“I agree,” Martha said, obviously finding courage in the alliance with Phelps.
“The point is that it has story value,” Gunderstein said, his pimples reddening, revealing an uncommon display of emotion that his flat, matter-of-fact way of speaking concealed. “Our only concern must be his involvement. Was Henderson involved in an official attempt at assassination? It’s not a question of our right to tell the story, or even make moral judgments on it. The question is: is the story correct, accurate to the best of our knowledge?”
“It’s still too circumstantial,” Nick persisted.
“We’re not a court of law,” Gunderstein said. “Responsible allegations are worth printing. You didn’t push for that kind of proof when we went after the President.”
He had said the words without passion, but their implications seemed an accusation.
“The man has denied the allegation,” Nick said hoarsely. “To my face.”
“And do you believe him, Nick?” Phelps asked.
He hesitated, not wanting to see his own
malice. “No,” he admitted, daring not to dissimulate in this group, but adding quickly, “purely a gut reaction and, as we all know, that’s no way to run a railroad.”
“You’re splitting hairs, Nick,” Phelps said, relighting his pipe.
“There are other factors to consider,” Nick said. He felt the beginnings of compulsiveness. His fatigue was beginning to betray him. What could they know of the isolation of command? If he bent over backward any more, he’d lose himself up his own asshole.
“Like what?” Gunderstein asked.
“Like the destruction of a man’s political career,” Nick said.
“I’ve heard that before,” Phelps said. “It sounds to me as if you want to protect him.” Nick watched Phelps’ eyes move toward Martha’s. She nodded assent, reinforcing his courage. “It’s almost as if we were as bad as they are, protecting our constituency, being selectively self-righteous.” Phelps’ neck muscles visibly tightened. Nick hoped he wouldn’t choose this moment to make a stand. Not now!
“I had hoped that you’d be more perceptive, Robert,” Nick said gently, trying to head him off.
“If I’m overreacting, Nick,” Phelps said, “forgive me. That comes from eating one’s heart out all those years.”
“It doesn’t necessarily follow that you’ll be destroying the man’s career,” Gunderstein said, taking a new tack. “Not that it should be any of our business. He can make a defense. We’re not all that omnipotent. After all, we’re digging back a few years. He’s a pretty resourceful guy.”
“He’ll pursue a strategy of denial,” Phelps interjected. “But I agree with Nick. It will make him suspect before his basic constituency. It will haunt him.”
“I suppose,” Gunderstein conceded. “But if we thought in those terms we would print nothing but social events, sports, and the comics.”
“You’ll have to forgive my humanity, guys,” Nick exploded sarcastically. He reached for another beer, pulled off the tab, and drank greedily.
“Case in point: Mrs. Henderson was in to see me today,” Nick said, watching their reaction.
“I expected that, Mr. Gold,” Martha said. “I pressed her very hard.”
“So she tells me.”
“Poor thing,” Martha Gates said. “She became very incensed with me, very indignant.”
“They’re good at that,” Phelps said. “Hiding behind their indignation.”
“A futile act by a futile woman,” Nick said.
He wondered if he should tell them more. Then he felt his tiredness return, his energy flatten.
“Shall we write the story, Mr. Gold?” Gunderstein persisted.
“I’ll let you know tomorrow,” Nick said. He was too exhausted for decisions.
Watching Martha Gates, he remembered Jennie again, his anxieties returning, loneliness descending. He stood up, feeling a rush of dizziness at the sudden rising.
“I’ll let you know tomorrow,” he repeated.
“Really, Nick,” Phelps said. His pipe had gone out again. “It should be told.” He planted himself directly in front of Nick. “Hell, it might even restore my faith in editors.”
“I hope not, Robert,” Nick said. “We’ll think we’re doing something wrong.”
He noted a look of disappointment on Martha’s face. Did he really need the night to sleep on it? Or was he afraid to show them too much flexibility? To them it was an important story, to him a gauntlet to be thrown, a move, perhaps, to change his life. He walked toward the door, turning to nod a farewell, ignoring the intimidating innocent face of Martha Gates. Gunderstein remained impassive. The red circles around his pimples, the measure of his contained anger, were gone now, but he continued to pick at them, contemplatively. Phelps followed him out the door, waiting with him for the elevator.
“I hope you don’t think I was out of line,” he said. “I know you might think that it’s a little late in the game to get religion. But I’ve begun to think like those kids. Nick, we’ve got no right to employ selective censorship.”
“We do it every day,” Nick said wearily. “We’re only people, Phelps. Only people.”
“But we have an obligation, Nick.”
“To whom?”
“To our readers. To the truth.”
He looked at the compact man, the pipe held high near his chin with delicate fingers, effeminate in their grace. “You’re about to make me sick, Phelps,” Nick said, thankful that the elevator arrived. He stepped into it and turned in time to see Phelps’ face, pale and confused. He deserved it, Nick thought to himself. Why was he showing off, flaunting his suddenly discovered sense of ethics in front of these intense, beady-eyed young people, this tribe of avenging angels?
In the street a breeze was rising. Cold air whipped his heated cheeks as he walked homeward on the deserted sidewalks. His mind, like his head, felt heavy, sluggish. It’s the male menopause, he told himself, finding humor in it, remembering the column on health that was the Chronicle’s regular feature. He had remembered, the symptoms: depression, temporary loss of virility, insecurity, loneliness, anxiety, the feeling of unfulfillment, indecisiveness, the haunting specter of life’s ending just around the corner. He must be in its terminal stage, he thought.
Shivering, he tucked his chin in his upturned collar, searching for warmth. He was drowning in self-pity, missing Charlie. How could Charlie have kept things from him? He, Nick, who had tucked away the most damning secret of Charlie’s life. Unless Phelps was lying. But even Myra had alluded to it. Had Charlie confided in Myra, whom he supposedly despised?
He had missed something and only now he felt its loss bitterly. Retracing the memory, he looked for clues among the ashes. He had by then become the acknowledged honcho, Charlie’s man, number two in the hierarchy of what the Chronicle had become. The competing paper had been humbled badly and was in decline, its vaunted number one position finally surrendered as the Chronicle surged ahead. Power, like an old whore, had been passed along to new hands, new faces, new lusts.
He was not surprised when the young President made a beeline for Charlie, whose acquaintance had been casual up to the nomination. Then after the Inauguration they had become buddies Charlie hopped around to the White House and all those vacation places, a regular member of the club that followed the President around the world in those days.
Not that Charlie had been totally captured. From time to time the Chronicle would deliberately mount a critical attack.
“Just to keep the mick honest,” Charlie had said. Nick had seen him pick up the phone and actually preview an editorial in advance, enjoying the banter and posturing as Nick had cringed. He had heard only one end of the conversation. Later he was regretful that they had never been taped, but that was in the days when wit was in vogue. It was the time of Camelot, and Charlie had his special rights as one of the Knights of the Round Table.
The bantering was sometimes an embarrassment. After all, the man at the other end of the phone was the President of the United States and the language used was definitely inappropriate to the station. But it was sop to one’s vanity to tell the President to take a flying fuck for himself, which Nick had heard with his own ears.
“You’re the Prez, kid. I’m only an ink-stained, free-loading, drunken newspaperman, which outpisses by two yards any thickheaded Boston Irishman with a roll of lace curtain up his gazoo.”
With the relationship, the importance of the Chronicle soared. After all, if Charlie and the President were such close buddies, what appeared in the Chronicle was now the bellwether of American policy. What Nick did not know until later was what Charlie had screened out—or how it had affected him.
The news of the Dallas bullet came to them while they munched sandwiches in Charlie’s office. The ring of the telephone, its special urgent timbre suggestive of intruding pain, was still a terrifying memory. The blood drained from Charlie’s face.
“My God,” he had finally uttered, swallowing with difficulty. “My God.” A kind of paralysis seemed
to grip him. Nick took the telephone from the desk where it had fallen. “My God,” Charlie kept repeating.
“The President has been shot.” It was Ben Madison’s voice. He had been a White House reporter then, in the President’s party.
Nick could remember in detail his own reaction, his mind crowding out the horror of it, working toward the practicalities of covering what was certainly the biggest story of his lifetime. He was already cataloging assignments, watching through the glass as the city room stirred with the first news rattling over the wires.
“He’ll never make it,” Ben said. “They blew his head off.”
“Who?”
“God knows.”
He saw Charlie, still pale, remove the remains of the mashed sandwich from his mouth, his eyes misting with tears.
“The bastards,” he shouted. It came as a primal scream, the anguish of his own life spilling out.
“Who do you think did it, Ben?” Nick asked.
“We’ll probably never really know,” Ben answered. Nick pressed for more details, holding the telephone up for them to see, signaling the desperate need for a rewrite man. Then the call was rerouted, while the editors gathered quickly in the old conference room where the budget meetings were held and Nick mapped out the coverage, assigning a troop of reporters to the story. Later, when he had come back to his office, Charlie had regained his composure with the help of a brandy bottle. They called for a television set and helplessly watched the details of succession, the trip home, the bloodied widow watching the passing of power on the airplane.
“He knew they would get him,” Charlie said, his tongue thickening with booze and grief. “He told me they would get him. They would take their revenge. Retribution! He was clairvoyant. He knew it. He said no protection would matter. They would find a way, no matter what.”
“Who?” Nick said, distracted, listening with half an ear, humoring his friend.
“They,” Charlie answered cryptically.
