Night of Camp David

by Fletcher Knebel

  A dozen reporters sprang to their feet. Hollenbach, honoring custom, nodded to the Associated Press correspondent, senior man on the White House beat, who stood in the favored front row aisle position.

  “Mr. President,” he asked, “could you say whether the Vice-President’s action was prompted by any prior discussion with you.”

  Hollenbach gripped the podium and those in the front rows could see that his knuckles went white. “With due respect to your diligence,” he said, “I refer you to the formal statement. As I said, I cannot entertain any questions on that subject.” Hollenbach nodded to Craig Spence, who thrust up his lanky body on the closing syllable of the President’s reply.

  “Respecting your limitation, sir, could you tell us when you expect to announce your own preference for your running mate?”

  Hollenbach nodded affably. “Oh, I would expect to notify the delegates in plenty of time—say two months before the convention, perhaps late June at the latest. Mind you, Craig, the delegates will have the last word.” He smiled. “My views amount to a recommendation only.”

  Laughter engulfed the room. Hollenbach’s answering smile was only a wisp, but his flecked green eyes showed a sparkle. With an arching finger, he indicated a newsman in the rear.

  “Mr. President, can you give us some idea of the type of man you’re considering?”

  Hollenbach nodded again. “Clearly, the basic quality we’re looking for is the same the American people want—an all-around ability to assume the office of President of the United States at a moment’s notice. While I feel fit enough, and I assume the Republican candidate will be equally healthy, we all live by a fragile thread. The Vice-President must be qualified in every respect to lead this country. None of us will forget the dignified and considerate, yet resolute, manner in which Lyndon Johnson took over the reins in those first awful moments in Dallas. It’s that definite, but indefinable, mark of leadership that we want in our vice-president.”

  “Do you have a list of men who meet that test, Mr. President?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Could you say, sir, how many are on it?”

  “Seven.”

  “Exactly seven, Mr. President?”

  “Well, seven at the moment, but that, of course, is subject to change. Fortunately, our party—and I wish I could say the same for the Republicans—is blessed with an abundance of talent.”

  A bureau chief on Craig Spence’s right whispered: “He left himself wide open with that one. By tomorrow the Republican committee will be billing this lash-up as ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ ”

  Spence beamed at him. “Not if I can get it into print first,” he said. “I’m swiping that one from you.”

  The newsmen sought to burrow into the political future for the next fifteen minutes, but Hollenbach blocked all attempts at further enlightenment. No, he would not name names. He refused to say whether any Cabinet members were on the list. He would not limit it by sex, or race either, for that matter. He declined to say whether or not he had conferred with anyone on his list. Finally, frustrated reporters turned the inquiries to other channels: the state of the economy, the status of his legislative program, the world’s trouble spots. A German correspondent, speaking in a heavy accent, asked his views on the new outbreak of skirmishing on the Israeli-Egyptian frontier, and the conference closed with a fervent presidential plea for peace and his hopes for success of the United Nations truce mission.

  In his office in the old Senate Office Building, Jim MacVeagh leaned across his littered desk, switched off his portable television set and sat watching the picture of the emptying State Department auditorium fade to a pencil point of light in the center of the screen. So the plot was thickening—and narrowing. Instead of the dozen possibilities that Joe Donovan estimated, the number was down to seven. And he was one of the seven. Or was he? Yes, he was sure he was, so that made the odds no more than six to one against him. And Karper and Nicholson were both out, judging by what Mark had said Saturday night, so that removed the most formidable competition. Who could the others be? He took the Congressional Directory from its position next to the donkey-shaped bookend and began leafing through the alphabetical list of senators, then the Cabinet and the state-by-state list of governors. Six other men? He could find but three who seemed to mesh smoothly with Hollenbach’s own complex personality. He sensed a rising warmth within, as though with the onset of a fever. God, it was tantalizing not knowing. He paced to the window and looked down at the traffic on Constitution Avenue. Rita was right. The bug had bitten him and there was no throwing off the virus.

  Rita. He wanted to see her tonight. Inwardly he reproached Martha for calling him that morning to say she and Chinky could not return until Saturday. Her mother had picked up a cold, and at her mother’s age, Martha said, she wouldn’t feel right leaving her. Old ladies got pneumonia so easily, she’d said, and he agreed. But, damn it, her mother had no business getting a cold right now. It exposed him, left him vulnerable. By her physical presence, Martha could protect him—and this gnawing ambition—from temptation. He grew petulant. Didn’t Martha realize that he had a chance to be vice-president, and that her duty was to be beside her husband?…The Congressional Directory lay open before him, but his mind went back to Rita and the curve of her wide, bare shoulders. He could smell the scent of rich perfume on her olive skin, and feel the warmth of her breasts on his chest and the soft nuzzling of her lips on his throat.

  MacVeagh reached for his personal telephone, the one that did not connect through the Capitol Hill switchboard, and dialed the number of the Democratic national committee.

  “Mrs. Krasicki, please.”

  She answered in her low voice that made his skin feel as though it were being brushed by satin. “Mr. Donovan’s office.”

  “Rita, it’s Jim. What are you doing tonight?”

  Silence, except for a muffled clink of her thin, gold bracelets.

  “I’d like to come over after work,” he said. “I’ll bring the groceries and do the steak.”

  She whispered into the mouthpiece, and he could imagine that she had turned her back on someone in the room.

  “We said it was over.” He could hear her breathing. “There isn’t even a scar on the wound yet.”

  “It’s only a scratch, baby,” he bantered. “I can heal it. I know just the right medicine.”

  “Jims, please. I don’t want to be hurt again.”

  “Rita, I need you.”

  “Need or want?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It matters a great deal.” She was still whispering. “Don’t be cruel, Jims.”

  “I’m not. I’m gentle—by your own admission.”

  “Oh, sweetheart. I do want to see you.”

  “Six-thirty?”

  “Make it seven. This is one of those days around here.”

  “Okay, martinis at seven. Until then.”

  “Good-by.”

  When he hung up, he found he felt none of the anticipatory elation which usually accompanied their telephoned arrangements. Instead, he felt vaguely depressed. She was hurt, she said, and he realized with a wince that he hadn’t thought of her feelings at all on Sunday. He had walked down the four brick steps, with only a stray backward thought, and he had driven to McLean with his mind on the vice-presidency, on himself and on the relief he felt that it was over. And now he persisted in going back to Georgetown and twisting the knife in a woman who had given without complaint. It had to end, and yet he was prolonging it, like the final kiss held too long at the end of a movie. No regrets, she’d said, and now there would be everything to regret. Had he really ever considered her feelings? No, he’d played a role: casual lover to a girl who desired, supposedly, without involvement, as though any woman ever did. Rita said he played at life. She was right. Why the devil couldn’t he have let it die, peacefully and
forever, on Sunday night? Now when it ended there would be a wrenching and an acrid taste in the mouth because he had come back into her life unbidden, guilty of a spiritual charge of breaking and entering. If he had the courage, he thought, he’d telephone back right now and cancel everything. But he didn’t do it. For a man who disliked self-analysis, he realized wryly, he had been indulging in a great deal of it lately. And then his eyes went back to the Congressional Directory and he wondered again who the other six men were.

  The wall bell rang once, rudely clattering like an old alarm clock, signaling the opening of the Senate session. MacVeagh checked his desk calendar to find the pending business. It was the Independent Offices appropriations bill and he had to be at his desk on the Senate floor, for the measure carried a number of Iowa projects, including the important one of erecting a new federal building at Davenport. He buzzed for his administrative assistant, Roger Carlson.

  Carlson, a huge, corn-haired young man who had played basketball at the University of Iowa, came into the room carrying a manila folder stuffed with papers.

  “Most of that poop is about that Davenport project,” he said, “but you’ll find some stuff on the others too.”

  Carlson gave the folder to MacVeagh and leaned on his big palms against the edge of the desk. He was coatless and his shirt was open at the neck, tie pulled to one side. Carlson was getting beefy after three years in Washington.

  “Jim, I’ve got a bet you’re on the list. Right?” His eyes searched MacVeagh’s for confirmation. Carlson loved the inwardness of politics, regarded any development of which he was not apprised in advance as a personal affront.

  “What makes you think so, Flip?” Carlson’s zest for the game amused MacVeagh. Jim sometimes thought the office of the junior senator from Iowa would operate more efficiently if their roles were reversed. And he suspected the thought was not alien to Carlson.

  “Just a process of elimination, Jim,” said Carlson. “If Mark, the pure in heart, says there are only seven on the list, I believe him. Right? And you’d have to be one of the seven.”

  “I appreciate your confidence in me, Flip, but what’s your reasoning?”

  “You don’t reason in this business.” Carlson grinned and held a finger aloft. “You get it by divine inspiration. Right? Wanna bet against yourself?”

  “No, thanks. There’d be no way of proving it anyway. When he announces his choice, nobody will ever know who the other six were.”

  “Well, how about a one-to-three bet that he picks you? Your thirty bucks to my ten?”

  MacVeagh laughed. “I should bet thirty dollars against myself? Flip, I’ve got enough troubles. Now get your big hams off the desk. I’m going over to the floor.”

  Carlson held the corridor door open for him. “It’s bugging you just a little, isn’t it, Jim?”

  MacVeagh nodded. “A little,” he admitted, “but not as much as it does you.”

  He rode the open subway tram to the Capitol, took the “Senators Only” elevator to the Senate floor level and settled himself at his antique mahogany desk on the rear row of the Democratic side. The majority leader was wrangling, in his high-pitched drone, with the minority leader over some obscure procedural point. The two leaders faced each other, politely combative, yet already dejected of voice, as though they had contested the point all night and would continue all day until reason outpointed opacity. Jim put a hand to his mouth to mask a yawn. Parliamentary pettifogging bored him, and he doubted he would ever have the patience to master it. He had lost several floor skirmishes because of his distaste for the Senate manual and its rules, and thereafter he’d brought Flip Carlson to sit beside him whenever a parliamentary snarl threatened one of his rare legislative ventures. Carlson knew the Senate manual as small boys knew the major league batting averages.

  A Senate page, in white shirt and black trousers, whispered in MacVeagh’s ear. The head of United Press International’s Senate staff wanted to see him in the lobby. Glad of an opportunity to escape the majority leader’s nasal delineation of the rule book and righteousness, MacVeagh sauntered out to the President’s room, with its immense gold chandelier and its faded rococo walls. The UPI reporter, a thin little man with a cheek tic that bespoke a thousand old wire service deadlines, wanted to know if MacVeagh had a candidate for vice-president, what he thought of Hollenbach’s “dumping” of O’Malley, whether he had reason to believe his name was on “the list,” his own guess as to Hollenbach’s eventual choice. MacVeagh answered cheerfully, parrying obliquely, managing to sound sincere while saying nothing. Being interviewed was an art and Jim was happy that he was intuitively adept at it. The UPI man scrawled his answers in a looping half-shorthand, seldom looked up, then hurried off to the press elevator as though pursued by demons.

  It was the first of a dozen such interviews for MacVeagh. Every senator in sight was quizzed as the newsmen gathered reaction to President Hollenbach’s announcement, biggest political story of the year. Senators shuttled on and off the floor like ponderous beetles, and the fate of the nation’s public works was forgotten while all hands played the joyful game of politics. The newsmen’s traffic in senators was especially heavy since they could not find Vice-President O’Malley, who had gone into seclusion, no one knew where. MacVeagh found himself answering the same questions so often that he could brighten his phrases and even get off a few bon mots.

  It was midaftenoon when Craig Spence called him from the floor and met him in the little vestibule off the Senate’s center aisle. Alcoves on each side, originally built for statuary, now contained red leather pads where senators could sit while conversing with callers. Few newsmen used this location. Spence liked his sessions with his friend MacVeagh to be as private as possible. The angular columnist stood with his hands in his coat pockets. The companionable freckles on his bony face matched his carrot fringe of hair. MacVeagh always felt at ease with Spence. It was understood that they spoke off-the-record always, unless the columnist asked permission to quote him.

  “Jim,” he said, “I’ve got a tip that the President really cussed the bejesus out of O’Malley at their meeting last night. You heard anything?”

  “Nothing. But I wouldn’t be surprised. I know that Hollenbach is mad at Pat, to a degree, I’d say, that isn’t justified by Pat’s behavior. Pat was dead wrong, of course, but it’s not as if he’d looted the Treasury or mugged somebody on the Mall.”

  “You mean the President is angrier than the facts justify?” Spence was lounging against the wall, but his eyes watched MacVeagh’s face alertly.

  MacVeagh thought of the flickering fire at Aspen lodge and the ruddy streaks in Hollenbach’s face as he exploded about O’Malley. “Yes, I’d say so. But why, I don’t know.”

  “Funny,” said Spence. “I got a hint of that from another source today. Wonder what’s bugging him?”

  “I wonder too,” mused MacVeagh. “It’s out of character for Mark. He’s usually beautifully controlled.”

  Spence switched topics. “Speaking of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs…” MacVeagh grinned. “Tell me, Jim, have you any reason to believe you’re on this list of seven?”

  MacVeagh answered carefully. He could never mislead his friend, but neither could he divulge his meeting with the President. “I don’t know whether I am or not, Craig. Flip Carlson thinks I am, but he’s speculating. A process of elimination, he says. Let’s put it this way. I’ve heard nothing definite, one way or the other.”

  “Logic says you ought to be on it.”

  “Are you speaking as a friend or a political expert?”

  Spence’s grin bunched the freckles on his cheeks. “In politics, you know as well as I do, there are no experts. We write a lot about the pros, but then every four years a bunch of young, sharp-eyed amateurs comes along and steals the party machinery for some candidate and gets him the nomination for president. It’s happening all over again with the Re
publicans this year.”

  “Let me ask you something, man to man, Craig. Be honest with me. Do you think I’ve got the stuff to be vice-president?”

  Spence was surprised. “Oh,” he said, “so you’re taking the thing seriously, huh? Well, you want an honest answer and I’ll give you one. Jim, I think you’ve got the potential. You’re intelligent, honest, and you want to do the right thing. But, damn it, man, I don’t think you do your homework. There’s still a lot of the playboy in you.”

  “Playboy?”

  Spence hunched his shoulders. “Oh, I don’t mean with women. You may or you may not be in that league.” He winked. “I don’t know about that. But I mean your whole attitude. You take things pretty easy.”

  MacVeagh smiled, somewhat sadly. “That makes it unanimous. Two other friends have told me the same thing recently.”

  “But the potential’s there, fellow.” Spence poked a fist lightly into MacVeagh’s shoulder. “Personally, I’d like to see you go to work.”

  They stood a moment in silence, both embarrassed at rummaging into MacVeagh’s character. Old friends take one another for granted, and MacVeagh was sorry he had forced Spence to cross the line.

  “As long as we’re on personalities, and I’ve got you in the mood,” said MacVeagh, “let me ask you about somebody else. Assuming that Hollenbach has lost his temper over O’Malley, which I suspect is the truth, have you ever heard of his doing it before?”

  Spence appeared puzzled. “No, I haven’t, I don’t think. No, never. Why do you ask?”

  MacVeagh tilted his head in a gesture of unconcern. “No special reason, except that it’s not like Mark to lose control of himself. And from what we’ve both heard, he apparently did this time.”

  “Of course, you can’t blame him. A spotless record for more than three years for the Hollenbach administration, and then in a couple of weeks O’Malley louses it up. I guess the President takes it as a personal insult.”

  “Yes,” said MacVeagh. “I guess he does.”