Night of Camp David Page 17

  “Don’t touch me,” she cried.

  When the sobbing ended, she at last accepted his proffer of a handkerchief, and she dried her eyes.

  “And so,” she said, “after the brief intermission for laughs, how do you explain the call from the Secret Service?”

  “I don’t.” Jim felt his voice sounded far away. He wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t, not without opening up the whole fantastic story of the nights of Camp David and his doubts about the President. She would never believe him, and even if she did, he could tell no one until he was sure. And when, if ever, would that be?

  So, it was true. He was under surveillance and investigation by the Secret Service. Luther Smith, or perhaps Chief Brothers, had cause to question Jim MacVeagh’s own mental processes. They knew of his recent late visits to Camp David, of his investigation in La Belle, and they must have concluded that MacVeagh bore watching lest he have designs on the safety of the President. Was that it? Was that their devious reasoning? The mood of depression lowered over him again like a black hood. He felt alone, divorced from this real world in which Rita sobbed for her shredding reputation.

  He spoke softly to her. “I don’t know what this is all about, Rita. All I can say is that I’ll do my best to find out. And when I do I’ll let you know.”

  She stood up to face him. Her olive face, bare of lipstick and rouge, seemed worn. Her shoulders slumped. Jim pitied her, but he noted there was no pang of the old desire. Lust had eroded like a shining piece of metal too long exposed to the rains. She seemed another Rita, defenseless, shorn of the stubborn Krasicki confidence.

  “Forgive me, Jim,” she said. “Our affair has always been more my doing than yours. I keep forgetting that it was I who called the last time. You didn’t really want to come.”

  “No regrets. Remember? Rita, don’t worry about this thing. There has to be some simple explanation, and as soon as I know I’ll call you.”

  She brushed the cleft of his chin with a quick kiss. “Thanks…Jims.”

  MacVeagh walked down the four steps again, casting one hostile glance at the Griscom house across the street. Then he sank into his bewildering maze of thoughts, and he did not remember to look up and down O Street. He did not see a young man in snap-brim hat standing at the corner. Nor did he see the family station wagon in which Martha and Chinky were riding. It passed as he started to walk toward Georgetown University.

  “Hey, Mom,” said Chinky inside the car. “There’s Pops!”

  Martha looked over her shoulder as she drove.

  “No, Jane,” she said quickly. “You’re mistaken.”

  Chinky twisted around in the front seat and looked back into the drawing twilight.

  “It is so too,” she insisted. “No hat, and that mat of black hair, and the white alligator coat. And he walks just like Pops. Come on, Mom, stop and pick him up.”

  “You’re mistaken, Jane,” said Martha firmly. “Your father is at the Senate. They’re still in session.”

  She pressed the accelerator and drove on. Chinky continued to stare back through the rear window, watching a man in a white coat who strode rapidly along the sidewalk.

  11.

  Patrick O’Malley

  Heedless of other pedestrians, Jim MacVeagh walked toward Georgetown University. The sinking sun still held a spring warmth, but an evening breeze played along O Street, ruffling Jim’s thatch of black hair and plucking at his clothes. Automatically Jim buttoned his white all-weather topcoat. His thoughts were on Rita and this new baffling development of the FBI. A single investigation of a United States senator by a federal agency was extraordinary enough, but to become the magnet for two sets of government sleuths was unheard of. Most certainly, he thought, the FBI questioning had been prompted by Mark Hollenbach. Never before had Jim known of a president ordering an investigation of his proposed vice-presidential candidate.

  MacVeagh walked with his head down, his eyes on the uneven brick sidewalks of Georgetown. Mark had a colossal gall, he thought, sending FBI men around to question Jim’s friends. The very idea was insulting. And now of course, the FBI knew about Rita, and soon, he surmised, a formal government report, as colorless as a traffic summons, would be on the President’s desk. He could imagine the language: “Subject has visited the apartment of a Mrs. Rita Krasicki, a widow employed at the Democratic National Committee, numerous times over a two-year period. Mrs. Krasicki refused to discuss the nature of their relations. Subject’s visits customarily at night. A neighbor, R. Paul Griscom, an attorney, reports that subject often looks up and down the street before leaving Mrs. Krasicki’s domicile. When interviewed, Mrs. Krasicki became angry….” An emotion, thought MacVeagh, which could not approach the flashing rage of President Hollenbach when he read the document.

  And so, Jim’s brief fling at the vice-presidency would come to a tawdry and abrupt end. Rita? Jim felt a welling of sympathy for her, but he noted that his feeling was passionless. If their affair hadn’t been over anyway, it had died forever in the little front parlor. Love might survive a hundred torments, but lust waned rapidly under duress….But Mark’s impressment of the FBI was of a piece with the gaudy grand concept of Camp David and the spluttering explosions over his supposed persecutors.

  Jim’s thoughts, a blue tangle of knots, were cut by a voice from a radio. A sweatered young man, probably a Georgetown University student, was standing at a corner curb, holding a tiny portable radio near his ear. Jim thought fleetingly that the youth must have eardrums of lead, for the volume was turned high. An announcer’s voice was blaring:

  We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. The White House has just announced that President Hollenbach will meet with Premier Zuchek of Russia on April 20 in Stockholm. An authoritative source says the summit conference will deal with the possibility of a united nuclear front against the threat of Red China which last month detonated its fifth “dragon bomb,” a hydrogen weapon thought to be of a magnitude of 75 million tons of TNT. Repeating, President Hollenbach will meet with Premier Zuchek on April 20 in Stockholm, Sweden. Stay tuned to WRC for more details on the six o’clock news program.

  Jim stood still for a moment, and once more he felt a twinge of apprehension, an increasingly common experience recently. Was time running out? In only about three weeks Hollenbach was to confront the stoic and practical Russian premier—in Sweden. Jim wondered if Hollenbach had stipulated the site and, if so, whether this was another cunning offshoot of the grand concept for a union with Scandinavia. Perhaps of a kind with Hollenbach’s choice of a vice-president whose wife happened to be of Swedish stock?

  Suddenly the thought struck MacVeagh: President Hollenbach must not be allowed to go into this conference with Zuchek. My God, Mark might be capable of anything. Who knew what fantastic secret agreement might emerge from such a meeting? Zuchek, a patient, steel-nerved negotiator, utterly devoted to Russia’s self-interest, vs. Hollenbach, whose once brilliant mind now was obsessed with fancied tormentors and played like a child’s with the toy blocks of destiny. The meeting had to be prevented, somehow, some way. And who else would attempt to stop it besides MacVeagh? Who else, indeed, even suspected what MacVeagh knew? He had to act at once. He knew it now. His own small concerns no longer mattered. Now it was a case of the country. The realization brought a faint smile to his face. Jim MacVeagh, playboy turned patriot. Country before self. All right, he thought, it may be corny, but it’s true. Do something. Now.

  Still in the trance of thought, MacVeagh looked uncertainly about him. A block away he saw a corner telephone booth. He walked quickly to it. He had to tell Martha he would be delayed. He dialed, and waited, but there was no answer at the McLean home.

  Jim retrieved the dime, then consulted a small memo book which he always carried. In it he found the unlisted home telephone number of Vice-President O’Malley. He dropped in the coin and dialed. Mrs. Grace O’Malley, her vo
ice as bright as a warbler’s, expressed surprise. Not many important people wanted to talk to Pat these days, she said. But she called her husband to the telephone. O’Malley said he was just having his first belt of bourbon for the day. Urgent? Nothing was urgent any more, he said wistfully, but sure, come on over and have one before dinner.

  Settled in his car, Jim remembered the gray sedan. He kept his eyes on the rear-view mirror as he drove. There was no gray sedan, but he soon became aware of a black one. He turned twice to test, and each time the black car turned up behind him. Jim drove to the garage on L Street behind the Statler Hilton Hotel, shoved a dollar in the attendant’s hand, and then ran out the back, through the long, covered passageway to K Street. He took the first taxi at the cab stand and promised the driver a tip for extra speed on the way to Capitol Hill. O’Malley lived in a renovated two-story stone house, a block behind the Congressional Hotel, within easy walking distance of his office on the Senate side of the Capitol. Jim was relieved to find, when alighting, that no moving black sedan was in sight.

  Grace O’Malley, a little woman with merry gray eyes and a quick laugh, hooked an arm through Jim’s as she welcomed him. “He’s in the library,” she said, “probably thinking murderous things about sports arenas and contractors.”

  The library door was open. Vice-President Patrick O’Malley heaved himself out of a well-worn easy chair. His left hand was fastened about a glass; bourbon and water, Jim guessed. His right hand, large and fleshy, came out to shake MacVeagh’s. Pat O’Malley had a long, jowly face which drooped comfortably like that of a basset hound. His paunch was solid and conspicuous, and he moved slowly. To meet Pat O’Malley for the first time was to relax immediately, as though one were entering a familiar saloon where the talk would be frank and never too refined. O’Malley pumped MacVeagh’s hand several times.

  “You’re a surprise, Jim,” he said. “I thought the young Scot would be out in Wisconsin, making sure he got the mick’s job.”

  “I’ll admit I’ve got the bug now, Pat,” said MacVeagh, “but only after you said you wouldn’t run again. Pat, I’ve never told you I’m sorry, but I am, sincerely. You got an unlucky break.”

  O’Malley waved his big hand. “None of that, young fellow. That’s all over and done with. These days, I’m wondering how an old pol goes about earning an honest living—for a change. Drink?”

  Jim nodded. “Scotch-on-the-rocks.”

  O’Malley shook his head, the jowls swinging slightly. “They raise these Iowa boys on bourbon and branch water, and then they come east and get seduced by Scotch.”

  The Vice-President poured a drink from a row of bottles on a lower bookshelf, handed the glass to Jim, then lumbered back to his easy chair. It was dusk outside now, and O’Malley turned on a floor lamp beside his reading chair. Crowded bookshelves lined two walls of the room and the other paneled walls were thick with autographed pictures of politicians of both parties.

  O’Malley, noting MacVeagh’s eyes on the pictures, held his glass toward the rows of blurred faces. “Not many live ones left up there,” he said. “I’ve been around a long time.” The Vice-President grunted, leaned forward heavily toward a cigar box resting on an end table and took out a cigar sheathed in silverish foil. He unwrapped it slowly, bit off the end, spat the fragment into a large green ashtray, and fussed with the lighting. At last he blew out a doughnut of smoke and eased back in his chair. The image is all against Pat, thought MacVeagh. With that fat cigar and those sagging jowls, he looks like a ward boss who’d play it low and crafty, but he isn’t that way at all.

  “I’d offer you one, Jim,” said O’Malley, “but I know you don’t have the habit. Well, young fellow, what’s so urgent?”

  “Pat, there’s no use puttering around the edges,” said Jim. “Something frightening is happening here in Washington, and if what I suspect is true, this country’s in deep trouble.”

  “And what do you suspect?”

  “I suspect…” Jim paused, then lunged ahead. “I suspect on the basis of personal observation—and some collateral evidence—that President Hollenbach is suffering a severe mental ailment.”

  Jim intended to go on, but he stopped involuntarily, checked by the sound of his own words. He had thought and brooded over this thing for days, had sketched it without names for Griscom, but this was the first time he’d said it aloud. The words seemed to come from afar as though rocks had been thrown into a canyon and one had to wait for the series of crashes below. Then the imagined echo faded and there was silence in the room. O’Malley puffed noiselessly at his cigar. His eyes centered on MacVeagh, seeking to extract the intent behind the words.

  “I’ve been in politics almost forty years,” he said at last, his voice steady, “and that’s the most serious charge I’ve ever heard.”

  “I know it, Pat. I’ve lived with this for two weeks now, and it’s about to undo me. I’ve come to you only because you’re the only one to go to. It’s a long story and I think you ought to hear all of it.”

  O’Malley said nothing for a moment. Then he rose from his chair, went to the door and called his wife.

  “Grace,” he said when she answered from the foot of the stairs, “let’s put dinner off for an hour or so, if we can. Senator MacVeagh and I need a little time to chat.”

  “Don’t worry, dear,” called his wife. “It’s only stew. It’ll keep.”

  O’Malley closed the door and returned to his chair, trailed by a funnel of smoke like an ancient steam locomotive. “All right,” he said. “Let’s have it.”

  This time, unlike his session with Griscom, MacVeagh told everything with names, omitting only the identity of Rita Krasicki. He began with the initial scene at Camp David, its intentional gloom and its wild, illogical outburst against O’Malley. He told of the similar eruption against Craig Spence, and again, from another source, of the causeless explosion over Davidge, the banker. Jim went into detail to describe his second session at Camp David when the grand concept was unveiled. He told of Hollenbach’s glittering eyes, his tumbling speech, and his maniacal vow to use force, if necessary, against the nations of Europe. Then he recounted the events since his second eerie meeting at Aspen lodge: Flip Carlson’s trip, the quizzing by Luther Smith, the shadowing by federal agents, and even the questioning of Rita. Although he did not name her, he hinted at the intimacy of their affair and told of his talk with her that afternoon. The recital consumed more than half an hour.

  O’Malley did not interrupt, but he kept his eyes fixed on MacVeagh, shifting them only occasionally to inspect the coils of smoke from his cigar. The room became hazed. Again there was silence while O’Malley squashed out the butt.

  When O’Malley spoke, his voice was keyed unnaturally low. “Jim, I wonder if you realize the impression you convey by that story?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that anyone listening to you might arrive at the conclusion that you’re the paranoid, not Hollenbach.”

  Jim felt the pit of his stomach go hollow. First Griscom, then Luther Smith and now Pat O’Malley.

  “Good God, Pat!” he exclaimed, and he realized at once that his voice squeaked with strain. He tried to resume a conversational tone. “Honestly, Pat, you don’t think I’m nuts, do you?”

  “Look at the facts,” said O’Malley, ignoring the question. “Here you are at age thirty-eight, a first-term senator, really a kid at this business, and you’re running a write-in campaign for my job. Delusions of grandeur? And these investigations by the Secret Service and the FBI, the stories about being followed by fast sedans driven by inscrutable young men. Persecution complex? And, let’s face it, young fellow. You’re obviously in a highly agitated state.”

  Jim found it an effort to throttle his emotions, to keep his voice on an even pitch. “Pat, since you won’t answer my question, let me ask you another one. What sort of mood was Mark Hollenbach in that Tues
day night when he called you to the White House and demanded your resignation?”

  O’Malley looked startled. “Well, he…he was goddam mad. Frankly, he blew his stack.”

  MacVeagh took a chance. “Flipped his lid is the common phrase for it, isn’t it? And isn’t it true that he accused you of trying to sabotage him by the way you handled your defense on the Jilinsky charges? That you plotted the whole thing just to defeat Hollenbach in November—the same screwy charges he made to me about you? Well, am I right?”

  O’Malley bit his lower lip and fingered his jowls as he thought. “Well, yes, you’re right. He really let me have it. If it had just been Jilinsky and the arena case, I’d have understood. But I thought his charge that I’d intentionally plotted his downfall was absurd. It didn’t make any sense.”

  “Of course it didn’t,” said MacVeagh quickly. “It made no sense at all—and from a mind that prides itself on logic. Pat, that kind of accusation could only come from a warped mind.

  “Take another thing. How about Hollenbach’s weird idea for a national wiretapping law? That was no joke at the Gridiron dinner. The President told me at Camp David that he was utterly serious about it. Just imagine hundreds of FBI agents combing through all the private phone conversations in this country? And that from a long-time champion of civil liberties. It’s not only idiotic, it’s insane. For Christ’s sake, Pat, admit it.”

  It seemed to MacVeagh that O’Malley was about to nod agreement, but checked himself. Instead, the Vice-President huddled deep into his chair, his full face brooding and his eyes staring at MacVeagh again.

  “Jim,” he said, “let me ask you a blunt question. Why are you so anxious to prove that the President of the United States is insane?”

  MacVeagh had the sensation that he was butting his head into mist. O’Malley’s doubts were thick in the room, and nothing he had said seemed to have dispersed them. He wanted to lash out in anger, and again it was an effort to control himself.