Night of Camp David Read online

  “Do I hear a second?” asked Trumbull, forgetting that he had not bothered with such parliamentary procedure on the first vote.

  “Second the motion,” said the State Department man.

  The vote was the same, three to two. Project CACTUS was dead.

  “With your permission, gentlemen,” said Trumbull, “I’ll amend that last vote to provide for a report to Secretary Karper by the full committee in person. On a matter of this importance, I think he’d understand our dilemma better if we all go in and talk informally with him. How about tomorrow morning at ten, if his schedule is free?”

  They all nodded agreement and Andrate, speaking for the first time that morning, said he was sure the Secretary could devote several hours to the subject the next morning.

  “We brought in a dry well, gentlemen,” said Trumbull, rising from his chair, “but I, for one, think I learned something.”

  “What?” asked the Harvard psychologist. Except for his shiny head, he looked sunken, worn, and a bit useless.

  “I think,” said Trumbull, “that I learned what we really all know, intuitively, but never quite admit to ourselves—that in any human endeavor there are some points that can’t be covered by law, and that, in the last analysis, you’ve just got to trust the men involved.”

  “Even if insane?” asked the Rand man.

  “The other way round,” replied Trumbull. “You trust a man to remain as normal as he was the day he got the job.”

  Papers were pushed into briefcases. Wearily, the Harvard man held out the red-bordered folder to the Rand man, but he shook his head with a wag of his pipe. The folder went into the Harvard dispatch case instead. Locks snapped, and the CACTUS thinkers filed out the door to the E corridor with its oil paintings of men storming atoll beaches in a war that never knew the horrors of the towering mushroom cloud until its final days.

  Big John Trumbull detained Butch Andrate at the doorway. He closed the door and stood with his hand on the knob.

  “No one will tell the Secretary tomorrow,” he said, “but there was just one sticky point in this whole thing. If it weren’t for that, we could have come up with something concrete weeks ago. You’ve heard all our discussions and I think you know what I mean. You’re the man to lay it on the line to Karper.”

  Andrate frowned and rubbed his perched glasses across the top of his head. “I’m not sure I get you, General. What sticky point?”

  “Andrate,” said Trumbull, “nobody—but nobody—in this country can tell a president of the United States that his mind is sick.”

  Andrate said nothing, merely stared at the general like an owl with four eyes.

  “The SAC commander, yes,” said Trumbull. “The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, yes. Your boss, yes. The head of the Ford Foundation, yes. The Speaker of the House, yes. The chairman of the Red Cross, yes. The President of the United States, no.”

  Andrate blinked. “That’s one man we have to trust?”

  “That’s one man we have to trust,” said Trumbull.

  The general opened the door and marched, shoulders thrown back, down the corridor and back toward Air Force retirement. Andrate watched until the general turned a corner and the dull echo of his footfall was swallowed by the Pentagon’s soundproofed halls.

  6.

  World Center

  As Project CACTUS dissolved in bootless disagreement that Monday morning at the Pentagon, Senator Jim MacVeagh walked toward the World Center Building in downtown Washington. A chill rain began to fall and it ran off his white raincoat in rivulets. He wore no hat, as usual, but he was oblivious to the moist mat the rain was making of his hair. Jim felt frayed and itchy-skinned. He had slept but little since returning from Camp David, and such snatches of sleep as he had managed had been torn by weird, crooked dreams which made him toss. Once Martha punched him in the ribs to wake him. He was growling and he had cried out, she said.

  He had called Paul Griscom after breakfast Sunday, and the lawyer agreed to see him at eleven today. MacVeagh skipped the Armed Services Subcommittee meeting he was supposed to chair, and now he was trying to put his tangled thoughts into some orderly sequence before facing Griscom.

  The law offices of Griscom, Fotheringill & Hadley bore the hushed accent of opulence. This was not the largest law firm in Washington, but it was regarded as the most influential—especially when the Democrats were in power. In the reception room, wall-to-wall carpeting of a cinnamon hue, its pile an inch thick into which the shoes of callers sank luxuriously, merged with dark-walnut paneling which showed tiny nicks of a cabinetmaker’s tools. This was no plywood veneer, but rich, thick wood. Currier & Ives prints, framed in tasteful green, graced the walls at spacious intervals. A blonde receptionist, comely but not too young, typed on a muted, electrically operated keyboard. Her smile was gracious, as though she were about to pour from a silver urn at a garden party. Her accent was British.

  “Senator MacVeagh? To see Mr. Griscom, isn’t it?” The syllables ran together in the muddily dentured style of the Empire’s lower-upper classes. MacVeagh nodded. The receptionist dialed a number and spoke to someone in chapel-like tones.

  “Would you please be seated?” she asked, as though he might not. “Mr. Griscom will be with you in a moment.”

  Paul Griscom loped toward him down the long corridor. He was a tall, spare man of about sixty. His tanned face had deep grooves as though time had clawed him and the wounds only recently had healed. His rimless spectacles reflected the light in darting rays, and deep, veined pouches under his eyes indicated an adult life of hard work, a poor liver or a riotous youth, perhaps all three. He wore an old gray suit, baggy at the knees. His long legs were bowed slightly. Paul Griscom had arrived in Washington as a law student forty years before, but he still referred to himself as a “country boy” from Wyoming.

  “Jim! It’s nice to see you. Come on back to the office, and I’ll give you a towel to dry off that hair of yours.”

  He conducted MacVeagh down the hall past a number of open doors. Young lawyers worked in smaller rooms, but amid the same quiet paneling and rich carpeting as those surrounding the receptionist.

  Griscom’s office, wide-windowed on the corner of 16th & K streets, had bare walls, painted a stark white, and rickety furniture that had the stamp of a secondhand sale. It was as though, having tiptoed through the cathedral, Griscom was saying to his clients: “Here’s where we get down to business.” The only wall decorations were autographed pictures, chiefly presidents of the United States. The one of Mark Hollenbach, Jim noted, was signed, “To my old friend, Paul.” Beside it hung a photograph of Mark Hollenbach, Jr., in a Yale varsity sweater, autographed “To Uncle Paul, a great guy and better pal.” MacVeagh was glad he had not come here as a client. The mixture of restrained elegance, country lawyer, and autographed influence was a heady one, and Jim was sure the fee would galvanize the effect. Griscom seemed to read his mind.

  “It always impresses them,” he said as one insider to another. “I don’t care whether they’re fresh from Peoria or whether they run the biggest corporations in New York.”

  MacVeagh used the towel Griscom handed him while the lawyer laboriously stuffed an old, silver-trimmed pipe. Griscom seated himself behind his desk, yanked out a tail of his shirt, blew on his spectacles and polished the lenses with the shirttail. They traded the amenities as Jim remembered the first time he’d met Griscom—when the lawyer came to Des Moines to testify on a model state tax law he recommended for MacVeagh’s legislative tax revision committee. Since then he had been Griscom’s guest for golf at the Chevy Chase and Burning Tree clubs. Griscom belonged to all the best clubs, including the 1900 F Street, the Metropolitan, the Sulgrave, and even the Waltz Group. Griscom was, among other things, a tax expert, and Jim assumed his membership dues were all deductible business items. It was income tax return time now. A pile of manila folders rested on the corner of Griscom
’s desk, and Jim saw that the top one was tagged, “Hollenbach, M. & E.”

  “Well, Jim, what’s your problem?” Griscom eyed him through a screen of pipe smoke. The lawyer’s tone was soothing, as though any human affliction, from sore feet to a federal antitrust indictment, could be cured in the offices of Griscom, Fotheringill & Hadley, the last of whom had been dead ten years.

  “This isn’t a legal problem, Paul,” said MacVeagh. Although he had rehearsed his opening, he felt like an actor who’d forgotten his entrance cue. “I came to you because…well, because you’ve got a wise head. Call it trust if you want, Paul. I’m deeply troubled, more than at any time in my life. And still I’m not sure you can actually help much either.”

  “Suppose you let me be the judge of that,” said Griscom. He puffed slowly at his silver-ringed pipe.

  “Paul…” Jim felt his pulse quicken as he took the first step. “Paul, I’ve become reasonably convinced that an influential man in this government is having severe mental problems, maybe a breakdown, maybe worse.”

  Griscom grunted. “He wouldn’t be the first.” He said nothing more, merely fingered the bowl of his pipe, studying the grain as though inspecting it for flaws.

  “I’m at a loss as to what I should do about it, if anything,” said MacVeagh. “As I say, this isn’t a legal problem, and I’m not here as a client. All I want is advice from a friend.”

  The dark pouches under Griscom’s eyes widened slightly as he smiled. “Don’t worry, Jim, we scale down the fees to meet any pocketbook. And the way you’re buttering up my ego, that will be payment enough. Come on now, let’s dispense with the preliminaries and have the whole story. I’ve got plenty of time.”

  MacVeagh shifted in his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose as he thought again of just how to say it. “Paul,” he began, “if this man were just an ordinary citizen, I wouldn’t waste your time. But he’s a prominent figure in Washington, and he’s in a position to influence both domestic and foreign policy. I’ve had occasion to observe him closely in recent days, and frankly, Paul, I think perhaps his mind is going to pieces. I’m deeply disturbed, even frightened by what I’ve seen and heard. Let me tell you in some detail.”

  Using no names and masking the scenes, MacVeagh told of Hollenbach’s savage outbursts against O’Malley, Spence and Davidge. When he recounted the Davidge incident, he faltered occasionally as he tried to recollect Rita’s exact words. He described Hollenbach’s physical appearance as he strode about and ranted, but he deleted Hollenbach’s habit of sitting on a lonely hill in the dark, for he felt sure Griscom would know of this idiosyncrasy and correctly identify his friend. Nor did Jim mention the wiretapping proposal. He knew Griscom had attended the Gridiron dinner and would promptly recognize the source of the idea. Otherwise MacVeagh pictured the Camp David scenes in detail. His recital took almost twenty minutes.

  Griscom yanked out his shirttail again to polish his glasses. “Tell me,” asked the lawyer, squinting at the results of his handiwork, “did your friend give any indication that he thought his…uh…tormenters were allied in any way?”

  “No…” Then Jim remembered, and he nodded quickly. “I mean yes. Yes, he did. His voice rather faded away once, and he mumbled something about a conspiracy, a ‘net closing’ around him, I think he said. I remember he said he was forced to take measures to protect himself.”

  “Anything more?”

  “Plenty,” said MacVeagh. “This man has been smitten with an outlandish idea of saving the world through a new union of nations—and what a strange conglomeration they are!”

  MacVeagh described the “grand concept” of the United States-Canada-Scandinavia merger and tried to make Griscom understand the passion which had seized Hollenbach while he talked. As he explained the project, MacVeagh watched Griscom closely. If Hollenbach had told others, Griscom would be a logical man in whom to confide. But the lawyer’s face showed no recognition. He was leaning back in his ragged swivel chair, the springs squeaking now and then, and he was smoking his pipe in a passive face.

  “And that’s not all,” said MacVeagh. “He actually proposed to use force—economic first, but military if necessary—to make the nations of Europe join this new super-union. Then I got the distinct impression, from several things he said, that he fancies himself as the head of this huge Western government. Paul, he talked like some kind of fanatic Messiah, and I don’t mind saying that he sent chills up and down my backbone. I’ve been frightened in my life, but not often. This fellow scared me as I haven’t been scared since I was in the service in Viet Nam.”

  “Jim,” said Griscom. “I think you said earlier that this man is in a position to influence government policy. Am I right?”

  MacVeagh nodded. He could sense that Griscom was waiting for him to divulge the name. For a moment, he was on the verge of doing so, but the moment crumbled. He did not dare. He just could not bring himself to accuse the President of the United States of having a sick mind. For one thing, he wasn’t sure. No man could make a charge like that without a mass of corroborative evidence—not even in private. For another thing, there was the awe of the office and the fear of what might happen to Senator MacVeagh if his suspicions proved groundless. He had half hoped that Griscom might put two and two together and sense the identity, but obviously the lawyer had not.

  Griscom stood up, shucked his coat and placed it on the back of his chair. “Come on into this next office, Jim, and let’s see what we can find.”

  The adjoining room was furnished in the rich, sleek brown colors common to the entire suite save for Griscom’s own office. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined the four walls and a long walnut table, equipped with several reading lamps, occupied the center of the room.

  “The firm has its own law library,” said Griscom, “but this is my private reference room. Here’s where I burn the midnight oil now and then, sometimes with one or two of the young lawyers to help. But I don’t think there’s a lawbook in the place.”

  He made a brief tour with MacVeagh at his side. “It’s amazing what a man has to know when he gets on a tough case,” he said. “Now this whole section here is construction stuff—how-to books on electricity, wiring, foundations, air-conditioning systems, God knows what all. We get a lot of building contract cases. This tier is all our old criminal stuff. We don’t do much of that any more, but in the early days I had to know everything about firearms. Just about every gun made in the world is described somewhere in one of these books.”

  He stopped before the bookcase adjoining a window which overlooked 16th Street. The rain had slackened, but umbrellas still bobbed along the sidewalks like enormous black bugs. Tires whined on the wet pavement.

  “This is my psychology section,” said Griscom. “To practice law today, a man has to be goddam near a couch man. Thanks to the Supreme Court, you’ve got to know motivation, psyche, neurology, and God knows what, everything from exaggerated trauma to the dynamics of the menopause. You get through one of these cases with a psychiatrist testifying about ego defense mechanisms, and you begin to think the whole world is screwy.” Griscom ran his fingers across the books on one shelf as he talked. “But I’d say your man isn’t too complicated a case….Ah, here we are.” He took down a thick, tan book. Griscom grinned, his face a network of wrinkles. “If you were an expert as I am, Jim, we’d go into something more exotic, but for the layman this is a fine book.”

  Griscom opened the fly-leaf and MacVeagh read: “Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life. Scott, Foresman and Company, by James C. Coleman, University of California at Los Angeles.”

  “This is an excellent, basic introduction to the whole kit and kaboodle of mental ailments,” said Griscom. “If your symptom isn’t in here, you’re a human cipher. You bite your nails? Take cocaine? How about satyriasis?…That’s where you need a woman three or four times a day. Nice thought, eh? Maybe you stammer? You name it, and the profess
or’s got it all catalogued, filed and explained for you. But kidding aside, this is a great textbook and a tremendous amount of research has gone into it. Now, let’s see if we can’t find your man.”

  Griscom perched his glasses on his thin, desiccated nose and peered through the lower part of the lenses. He riffled the pages of the book. “Yep, here we are. Page 289. It’s headed ‘Paranoid Reactions.’ Now let’s see if we recognize anyone here.”

  The lawyer stepped to the window and began to read aloud:

  “ ‘The individual feels that he is being singled out and taken advantage of, mistreated, plotted against, stolen from, spied upon, ignored, or otherwise mistreated by his “enemies.”…’ ”

  Griscom glanced up at MacVeagh. “Now let’s skip a little here,” he said as he turned a page. “Quote. ‘Although the evidence which the paranoiac advances to justify his claims may be extremely tenuous and inconclusive, he is unwilling to accept any other possible explanation and is impervious to reason.’ Unquote. You said you argued with your man about the motives of these so-called persecutors, but he ignored you? Does this sound like your man?”

  Jim nodded. Griscom skipped over a few paragraphs. “Now let’s go into the other phases. Listen:

  “ ‘Although ideas of persecution predominate in paranoid reactions, many paranoids develop delusions of grandeur in which they endow themselves with superior or unique ability. Such “exalted” ideas usually center around Messianic missions, social reforms, and remarkable inventions….Such individuals usually become attached to some social reform movement such as prohibition, and are tireless and fanatical crusaders, although they often do their cause more harm than good by their self-righteousness and their condemnation of others.’ ”

  Griscom paused and peered over his glasses at MacVeagh. “Now you say, however, that usually your man appears quite normal, and that he’s a fellow of quick intelligence with a lot of sound ideas?”