“Yes, sir.”
“And I want General Houck, the army chief of staff, in operational charge of Southern Command, Panama to the Rio Grande, including both Pacific and Atlantic naval battle groups. He’s to operate not from Panama City but Tegucigalpa.”
“The navy secretary will bitch. General DeVore will bitch.”
“This will be by order of the president. Everything in Central America will be purple. He’ll be completely in charge. And I want lots of press with him. I want them watching this thing from the very beginning, and first hand.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jim,” he said to National Security Adviser Malcom. “You’re going to have the biggest load. I want you or your deputy in the White House morning, noon, and night, in full charge of the NSC. If Atherton calls an NSC meeting, I want you to make sure nothing proceeds unless Defense Secretary Moran, one of the Joint Chiefs, and Admiral Elmore are present. I want you to pick your reliables from the NSC staff and have them sack out on the White House basement floor if necessary. At the same time, I want you to get down to Mexico whenever it’s at all possible. You’ll be needed.”
“I’ve already attended to that, Mr. Ambrose.”
Ambrose looked to Weigle, who was almost embarrassingly overjoyed that he had at last been invited to Camp David.
“Surgeon General Potter is going to remain here and issue medical reports and bulletins every day from Thurmont. You’re to assist him in these daily briefings. The president’s condition will improve daily.”
“Who will brief me?”
“I will. Every day. I’m the poor son of a bitch who’s going to have to stay up here, until the State of the Union.”
He looked to Jerry Greene. “How soon can we get on the air again?”
“A week, at best. Probably two. I’ll figure out an appropriate occasion.”
“Just one. We’ll save everything else for the State of the Union. Callister. All right, damn it all, I’ll call you David, we’ve been in this all together long enough. David, I want you back in Washington. That’s Washington, not New York or Bermuda. If you can stop thinking—and acting—like a Harvard-educated Mafia hit man, I want you and your wife all over the capital social scene, at your most affable. You can be affable?”
“Magnificently affable.”
“Good.” Ambrose turned to Rollins. “Andy, the same goes for you. Full-scale normality. The president is on the mend. There will be a State of the Union address. If you don’t show up for lunch three days a week at the Monocle I’ll consider it an act of treason.”
“Thanks.”
“All right. Is there anyone here who has never leaked anything to the press?” The only person to raise his hand was Press Secretary Weigle. Ambrose shook his head. “Okay, excepting for Weigle, you all know how it’s done. I want the other side on the defensive. I want you guys to pull every trick that Sun-tzu and Dr. Goebbels ever dreamed of. I want a torrent of leaks—the president’s pissed because he’s heard that Atherton’s been using the Oval Office, and sitting in his chair! I want to hear rumors that Washington is crawling with Russian agents. That the speaker wants to become president. That the Special Functions Force is preparing for a military coup. That the Israelis have readied a nuclear weapon. That the vice president is cracking up.”
“That’s no rumor,” said Rollins.
“You know, Admiral Elmore has a file of highly compromising photographs taken of Atherton with a Brazilian lady at the conference at Cancun last winter,” Moran said. “But he wouldn’t release them to us without an order under presidential signature.”
“Why did we ever let Central Intelligence stay in the hands of God?”
“No vice presidential nudies,” said Ambrose. “But everything else you guys can throw at the press, and I mean most of all the TV types, stuff they can chew on from now to the State of the Union. Andy, what can we do about Peter Brookes?”
“Absolutely nothing. Even if he weren’t being railroaded, he’s been into enough squirrelly stuff to keep him in the slammer on a ten to twenty.”
“All right. Top priority, when this is over, is getting him out. He’s the best friend the president ever had and we’ve left him out to dry. Now, most important of all, what’s your best cabinet nose count on the Twenty-fifth Amendment?”
“In the cabinet, we lose,” said Moran. “You gave them too many cabinet jobs at the convention.”
“Except for State and justice, we gave them shit.”
“When shit votes, shit counts.”
“We can stop them in the Congress. The Constitution allows a body designated by Congress to rule on the Twenty-fifth. The applicable resolution requires a two-thirds vote of Congress to approve the body’s recommendations.”
“You can’t stop them in Congress if they move first in the cabinet,” Malcom said.
“Then we’ll move first,” said Ambrose. “I want our people—that means you, Andy—introducing a Twenty-fifth Amendment measure tomorrow. A blue-ribbon commission to clear the air, but it’s not to meet before the State of the Union.”
“It’ll be too obvious if my name’s on it,” said Rollins. “I’ll get one of the moderates. Two of them have been after me on this ever since Gettysburg anyway. Especially Larson.”
“Just make sure they get moving before Atherton does.”
“What about this Dresden and his, uh, doxy?” said Callister.
“He sure punched out your ego, didn’t he?” Ambrose said.
“Maddy Calendiari is no doxy,” said Rollins.
“I’ll leave such assessments to your well-researched expertise,” Callister said. “But you can’t just leave those people walking about. They are entirely too well informed, and too damn dangerous.”
“I don’t want to mess with them until after the State of the Union,” said Ambrose. “Then I want to mess with them a lot. I want to know everything there is to know about how C. D. and Pete got it.”
“They know everything,” Jerry Greene said.
“Quite possibly,” said Callister, “they did everything. That maniac was carrying a gun that looked like one of those ceremonial Gettysburg cannons. And we have no idea where the Calendiari woman and Dresden are.”
“After the State of the Union we’ll find out,” said Ambrose. “No more trouble now. No more bodies. This is the United States of America. This is its government.”
They all started to leave, but were premature. “One last thing,” said Ambrose. “Daisy Hampton.”
“Up to two fifths a day,” said Rollins, sadly. “If we try to stop it, it’ll all get worse.”
“Two fifths?” said Greene. “Three days ago I logged two liters. Jack Daniels Black. What’s a liter? More than a quart.”
“It’s time for a dryer. Detox,” said Rollins. “She could kill herself. Talk about problems.”
“Not in Washington,” Ambrose said.
“You’re right,” said Rollins. “Go into any first-class detox and you’ll find some House committee chairman and a Pulitzer Prize winner. No place for any First Lady. Especially this First Lady.”
“Not Virginia,” said Callister. “No Virginia gentleman puts a Virginia lady in detox.”
The vice president’s session was billed as a full-fledged cabinet meeting, though it was far from that. The full-fledged cabinet members included only Secretary of State Merriman Crosby, the attorney general, and the commerce secretary. The others at the long table in the Roosevelt Room included the navy secretary, a Princeton classmate of the vice president’s; FBI Director Steven Copley; and the triumvirate of chief aide Richard Shawcross, Press Secretary Neil Howard, and the ubiquitous Mrs. Hildebrand. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had perfunctorily been invited, but to everyone’s relief, had sent regrets, pleading the exigencies of the Central American situation. The treasury secretary, at Atherton’s request, had been sent to Brussels for a GATT meeting.
“The military’s ready to pop a Def Con Two at the first shot of
a BB gun,” said the navy secretary, “and by God do we have BB guns.”
“Not to be used until the State of the Union,” said Atherton. He was more serious than anyone in the room could remember. The vagueness and melancholy had gone.
“D’accord.”
Everyone else at the table nodded.
“What’s the latest on Camp David?” the vice president asked.
“They’re moving,” said Shawcross. “Interestingly, their D-Day is the same as ours—the State of the Union.”
“I’m sure for the same reason,” Atherton said. “They can’t afford to wait a moment longer. Precisely. Have we any reading on what they’re up to?”
“They’re planning to bring in a lot of heavy audiovisual aids into the House chambers,” Shawcross said.
“Which smacks of more videotaped president,” said Howard. “They’re also leaking every wild rumor imaginable as hot official stuff, just to keep the newspapers full and the nightly news jam-packed with garbage.”
“Comme toujours,” said the secretary of state.
“Very well, Merriman,” said Atherton. “What can you report of Central America that is nongarbage?” He used the French pronunciation.
“It’s all proceeding as we’ve been informed and have expected,” Crosby said. “Almost anything can make a shambles of it, and almost anything is likely to happen.”
“Though not until the State of the Union!” Atherton snapped.
“Indeed. But you could almost go out and tell the press in all honesty that the diplomatic situation is rapidly deteriorating. The Nicaraguans are holding out for everything they can get.”
“As the late Mayor Daley of Chicago once said, they smell the meat a’cookin’,” said Neil Howard.
“The quote is actually attributable to an Illinois politician named Paul Powell, who was found to have eight hundred thousand dollars in small bills stashed away in shoeboxes in his closet when he expired.”
“Nowadays, a pittance,” said Copley.
“Let us not wallow in the esoteric sleaze of the past,” said Atherton, looking most directly at Copley. “What is the status of this Charles Dresden and Senator Calendiari’s wife?”
“There’ve been several hundred APBs issued and a manhunt ordered such as you haven’t seen since the days of Melvin Purvis.”
“They are to be apprehended and interrogated,” said Atherton. “Not massacred. Did I send flowers to Calendiari’s funeral?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Hildebrand.
“David Callister has a column today blaming the Central American situation on your, in his words, interference and incompetence,” Neil Howard said. “I can get a reply onto the op-ed page of the Post.”
“No,” said Atherton. “Nothing until the State of the Union.” He looked darkly around the table. “Is that absolutely understood?”
“Entendu,” said Crosby, speaking for all.
Kreski was at a sidewalk café’s table on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma. On the table in front of him was a pile of official papers in Spanish that had cost Kreski $4234.26. They were Juan Jalisco’s resume, compiled by Kreski during his visits to Tabasco, Tampico, and Veracruz.
In Tabasco, many years before, Jalisco had worked as a deck hand and general roustabout on an off-shore oil-drilling rig, eventually getting promoted to crew chief. The drilling company was a privately owned firm under contract to Pemex, the Mexican state oil monopoly. An affiliated firm, also under contract to Pemex, ran a refinery operation in Tampico. Jalisco had moved there to take a better-paying foreman’s job, and subsequently was promoted to supervisor. According to Kreski’s generously bribed informants, the promotion had come as much from his outspoken right-wing politics as from his abilities, though these were considerable.
Then, mystifyingly, Jalisco had moved back to his native Veracruz to take a position little better than a clerk’s with a shipping line, becoming as politically active as he had been outspoken. It was shortly after that that he became an operative in the battle zones of Central America.
The shipping line, though operating under Panamanian registery, was owned by the same family that owned the drilling subcontractor in Tabasco and the refinery operation in Tampico. The family was large, with several branches and many different names, though all of them very old and high-bred Spanish, some of them dating back to the days of the dons and the conquistadores. It was nevertheless a very close-knit family, almost Sicilian in its traditions and loyalties. The drilling and refinery businesses and the shipping line were minor subsidiaries. Most of its vast and immeasurably wealthy holdings were agricultural, extending throughout Central America, including Honduras and Guatemala. Until expropriated by the leftist governments there, they had been amply manifest in El Salvador and Nicaragua.
The family had an American branch, whose roots north of the border had predated the conquests of President Polk’s Mexican War. The name of this American branch was one extremely familiar to Kreski. It had chilled him to the marrow when he had come across it. He had stared at it for long minutes in disbelief. He had looked at it upon his papers several times, as though he had made some mistake, as though he could make it disappear. It had not. It remained boldly visible on the top of the pile of papers before him.
He returned them to their folder, wound the fastenings tightly, and placed and locked them in the nondescript briefcase he had bought. His job, as the cliché went, was done there. Now his chief task was to get out of Mexico—and into the United States—alive. Into the United States and the city of Washington.
Dresden supposed they could call their continuing January stay in the British Embassy comfortable. There were cheery blazes kept on every hearth. The ambassador, Graham Thompson, and the occasional extra guests were as friendly and convivial as the circumstances allowed. Books, music, and other entertainments provided made the passage of time tolerable. Dresden found at length that he was getting used to the place, and not a little fond of it. It was a healthy attitude, as the ambassador and Thompson remained firm in their refusal to allow either Dresden or Maddy off the premises. “Your lives couldn’t be more in jeopardy, old boy,” he was reminded. “The book of the dead since Gettysburg is a most ample volume. It needs no appendix.”
So they made do, Dresden perhaps better than Maddy, who seemed to grow more morose. She had days that, if not happy, at least were marked by participation in conversation and the occasional wan smile. Most days, especially the gray, gloomy, rain-wet ones, were marked by long silences, and often tears, though not outright sobbing.
Dresden had not expected the same forthright courage with which she had surprised him so often in previous weeks. Indeed, he had anticipated just the opposite—a complete, if temporary, emotional collapse. That she persisted in this unresponsive and often sullen state perplexed and frustrated him. He tried every imaginable means of penetrating her wall of implacable sadness—laughter, jokes, nostalgia, recitations of the dangers that surrounded them, discussions of the unfolding events reported in the newspapers and on television. He sought her sympathy for his own anger, fear, and sadness. He even lost his temper with her. Nothing worked.
Attempts at lovemaking, especially, did not work, even after she had recovered from her wound. Sometimes she would allow him into her room, even to sit on her bed in conversation. But when he tried to climb into it, or simply to hold her protectively and caress her affectionately, she always turned away. She never struggled. She would curl up like some creature retreating into its shell, or just lie limp and staring.
One night, however, she suddenly reached for him, clutching his arm with a hard, pinching hand and pulling him over and onto her. He caught just a glimpse of her face in the pale light. There was no passion in her fierce expression, just urgency, need, and pain. She was full of anguish. When after a few frantic moments they were done, it was not diminished.
“There is a rat in the house that Maddy built,” she said.
They were lying side by side, very
still. He took her hand, holding it very lightly between both of his.
“What did you say?”
“That poem I wrote you once:
This is the house that Maddy built.
Over a river, surrounded by trees, with sun
on the pool behind it.
This is the wine that lay in the house that Maddy built.
Champagne, Mumm’s ’59.
This is the rat who drank the champagne that
lay in the house that Maddy built.”
“Do you mean me?”
“No. You are ‘the friend who chased the rat who drank the champagne that lay in the house that Maddy built.’ You are ‘Handsome Lancelot Charles D.’ Except you haven’t chased the rat. This place, this is the house that Maddy built, and Maddy has come to loathe and despise it. This is the house of the rat.”
He turned his head to look upon her face in profile. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling. There seemed no madness in them.
“I feel dead, Charley. I feel that I have died and this great endless house is my grave and I shall never ever leave it.”
“They’re very civil about it, but we are their prisoners here, aren’t we?”
“No. We’re prisoners of ourselves, of what we’ve done, of what we are. If they let us walk out that huge iron gate tomorrow, we wouldn’t do it, would we? We’d be afraid. We’d come scurrying back. There is no other place for us now, except this house.”
“We’ll get out of here. Trust me.”
She said nothing, blue eyes staring.
“Please trust me,” he said. “I love you. You have my love. You’ll always have that. Don’t you love me?”
“Do I love you, Charley? Somewhere inside, in some old part of me, I love you. Somewhere inside I love George. I am a little girl again, loving my father, clinging to him. But it is the love of the dead for the living, the dead for the dead. I thought that making love might somehow miraculously revive me, shake me from this, but I still feel cold as stone, more so because making love made no difference.”
By Order of the President Page 47
