Night of Camp David Page 19

  O’Malley showed interest. “That’s possible,” he said.

  MacVeagh brightened. “Okay, suppose you invited the three most influential men on the Hill, say Speaker Nicholson, Fred Odium and—the House Republican leader, to make it bipartisan?”

  O’Malley bridled. “No Republicans,” he said. “I’m not going to have any Republican listen to the kind of pure conjecture that’s involved here.”

  “But, Pat,” protested MacVeagh, “this is a matter for the nation, not the party. Suppose you had to act? Suppose it came down to that? You’d want the support of both parties.”

  “I’m not going to trust any Republican with that kind of ammunition in a campaign year,” said O’Malley flatly. “I may have been thrown off the ticket, but I’m no turncoat. No, that’s out.”

  MacVeagh beat a judicious retreat, but he refused to surrender now that O’Malley appeared to be in the mood.

  “All right, then,” he said, “how about Grady Cavanaugh? He’s got the stature, on the Supreme Court, and he’s one Democrat everybody trusts.”

  “Grady would be fine,” agreed O’Malley. “And, besides, he’s got a great mind for sifting evidence. Frankly, I’d place a lot of reliance on what he thinks of your story.”

  And so it was settled. They talked about the arrangements, and both agreed that if Cavanaugh assented, it would be best to hold the meeting at his country home. Cavanaugh was a widower who owned 200 acres with a farmhouse on a high hill overlooking St. Leonard’s Creek, about 60 miles from Washington. The Supreme Court justice spent his weekends there. The place was isolated and secluded, set off from the main highway by thick woods. This was a Monday night, and they agreed on Thursday night for the meeting, if it was convenient for the others.

  O’Malley accompanied MacVeagh down the stairs and through the narrow hall to the front door. Grace O’Malley leaned out of a doorway.

  “Do you two connivers realize it’s nine o’clock?” she asked. “You’ve been talking—or drinking—for more than three hours. And Pat told me he was through with politics.”

  “But we’re not through with him, Grace,” said Jim.

  “I can see—I mean I can smell—that you aren’t. Say hello to Martha for me, Jim.”

  At the front door O’Malley shook Jim’s hand in a friendly grip.

  “Jim,” he whispered, “I can tell you right now that your story won’t be believed Thursday night unless you can produce the woman who can tell us about Hollenbach and Davidge.”

  “Pat, please,” Jim pleaded.

  “I mean it.”

  Jim frowned. “We’ll see.” he said.

  12.

  Martha

  The mood of dejection which enveloped him like a cocoon almost constantly these days was upon Jim again as he rode away in a taxi. The only consolation, a thin one, was the realization that apparently he had not been followed to O’Malley’s house. There was no evidence of pursuit as the taxi rolled down Constitution Avenue to the garage on L Street, near 16th, where he’d left his convertible.

  But even that minor victory dissolved when he reclaimed his car and drove toward McLean. The rear-view mirror disclosed a black sedan maintaining the pace about a hundred yards behind. Jim watched the trailing vehicle for a bit, but then dismissed it. Now that he was on his way home, he really didn’t care how many diaries of surveillance recorded the fact. Jim’s thoughts centered bleakly on O’Malley. The Vice-President, Jim surmised, probably had an instinctive feeling that Jim was right, but O’Malley’s mind obviously refused to accept the fact. Only unanimous agreement by the leaders Thursday night would propel O’Malley to action. Jim knew that somehow he must convince these four men of the nation’s danger. But wasn’t Pat right? Would they ever believe him unless they heard the Davidge story from Rita herself? And how could he persuade her to talk, especially when she had no inkling of his conviction about Hollenbach’s mental state?

  Thinking of Rita made him realize that Martha had no idea where he was. It had been four hours since he’d called from the Georgetown phone booth and gotten no answer. MacVeagh pulled into a gas station at the foot of Key Bridge and called home. Martha listened in silence to his explanation.

  “Where are you calling from?” she asked.

  “A pay station on M Street near Key Bridge.”

  “Oh, yes. Georgetown.” She sounded dispirited.

  When Jim turned into his driveway in McLean, the open garage was dark, but his headlights framed a figure standing inside. It was Martha, leaning against the workbench which Jim hadn’t used in weeks. She held the collar of a cloth coat about her throat against the chill of the night, and she blinked in the glare. When Jim turned off the ignition, she leaned inside the convertible.

  “Jim,” she said, “take off that white coat and put it in the trunk of the car.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t ask questions,” she said, her tone peremptory. “Just do it.”

  He leaned across the front seat to kiss her, but she pulled back. Jim questioned, blankly, but Martha merely jerked her head toward the rear of the car. Jim took off the topcoat, unlocked the trunk compartment and stowed the coat beside the spare tire.

  “What the devil…?” But Martha was walking across the lawn to the front door, a hand clutching her coat collar.

  In the vestibule, Chinky greeted him with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. The pony tail stretched her hair tight from her forehead, and her wide, brown eyes shone with pleasure. Chinky rubbed a hand over his sleeve.

  “It’s cold out, Pops. Where’s your topcoat?”

  Martha, standing beside them, spoke quickly. “He lost it,” she said. “He left it in a restaurant this noon, and somebody took it. Your dad’s getting absent-minded in his middle age.”

  Jim stared at his wife. She returned the look without smiling, her face impassive. Martha turned to the closet and removed her coat, then stood fluffing her brown, close-bobbed hair before the closet door mirror.

  “Oh, so it wasn’t you after all this afternoon?” asked Chinky.

  Jim stared again, this time at his daughter.

  “What are you talking about, Chinky?” he asked. “Who wasn’t me? Where?”

  Chinky planted her legs wide apart, her favorite stance. She tilted her head as she surveyed him.

  “Mom and I saw a man coming out of a house on O Street this afternoon,” she said. “He had messy black hair, just like you, and no hat, just like you, and he wore a white alligator coat too. I was sure it was you, Pops. I even wanted to stop and pick the man up.”

  Jim shot a glance at Martha, but she was intent on the mirror. Her lips were pressed tightly together.

  “No, it wasn’t me,” Jim improvised. “I’ve been in conference with Vice-President O’Malley, up on the Hill, ever since the Senate quit.”

  “Pops,” said Chinky, “you’d better watch out. You’ve got a double. The guy better behave himself.”

  Jim could not bring himself to look at Martha. It was all plain to him now, and he could feel color creeping into his cheeks. So Martha knew. How did she find out? Suddenly, he felt a thrust of pride for his wife. She knew, but she was shielding Chinky from the knowledge. He turned to thank her, mutely, but Martha was already walking toward the kitchen, her high heels clicking a brisk tattoo on the floor.

  “I’ll fix the leftovers for you,” she said.

  Jim ate alone in the kitchen. The cold meat loaf seemed tasteless and he pushed it away, half eaten. Instead, he drank two glasses of milk and foraged in the freezer top of the refrigerator until he found a pint of chocolate ice cream. Martha stayed out of the kitchen. From Chinky’s room came the usual discordant sounds. She was on a telephone extension, prattling to some unknown teen-age confidante. Jim felt like a stranger in his own house. He dawdled over the ice cream, trying to put off the moment when he had to face Martha alone. L
ater, in the upstairs den, he tried to read, but his eyes kept roving over the same column of type in a news magazine, and he realized he was absorbing nothing.

  When he finally went to bed, Martha was lying far to her side. When he settled himself, almost a foot separated them. The middle of the bed stretched as vacant and cold as new snow. Martha’s breathing was regular, but forced, and Jim knew that she was feigning sleep. He wanted to reach out and fold her to him, as he did every night, but he could not make his arm move. They lay there unspeaking, both rigid, their breathing clamoring over the unseen wall between them. Finally, she turned slightly and spoke. Her tone was flat.

  “Jim,” she said, “I know something has been troubling you lately. I’ve sensed it ever since we got home from Iowa. Do you want to tell me?”

  “I do, Marty.” He answered eagerly. “It’s a frightening thing and it’s worrying the hell out of me. I want to tell you, but I can’t.”

  There was a long silence. The air hung heavy between them.

  “Jim,” she said in almost a whisper, “I know her name.”

  He said nothing. He waited, tensed, and he was conscious of his heart beating against the lower sheet.

  “I’ve known for four or five weeks,” she continued. “I heard about it quite a while before Jane and I went to Des Moines.”

  “Martha.” He felt limp and lost, and he was reminded of the time he’d undergone a spinal tap, testing for polio. When the needle struck, his body went totally slack, a bottomless feeling, as though every source of energy had been drained at once by a huge suction pump. The sensation lasted only a few seconds, but it seemed timeless. And so it was now.

  At last Jim touched Martha’s back awkwardly. He searched over the sheen of her nightgown for her hand and when he found it, he squeezed hard.

  “Marty,” he said softly, “all I can say is that I love you deeply. I made a terrible mistake, a thoughtless one, but it all ended—some time ago.”

  And as he said it, three weeks seemed not just “some time ago” but an eternity in the past. At this moment he wished with all his being that he had never met Rita Krasicki.

  “But, if it’s all over,” asked Martha, her face still averted and the pillow swallowing her words, “why were you at—at her place—this afternoon?”

  “I can’t tell you, Martha. It’s all mixed up with this other thing, this thing about national security, I guess you’d call it. Someday I can tell you, but not now. You’ll just have to trust me, Martha.”

  His response was instinctive, but no sooner had he made it than Jim began analyzing his reasons for refusing to tell Martha everything. It would be natural to tell her, his own wife, the entire haunting story about President Hollenbach, from beginning to end. But to her, he knew, it would sound fantastic, incredible. A crazy president? She would immediately assume he’d concocted the whole weird tale to distract her from his affair with Rita. And if he did tell everything, how could he explain where—and when—he learned Rita’s story of the President’s savage indictment of Davidge. No, his instinctive reply had been the correct one. He just couldn’t tell Martha—not now.

  Martha said nothing. Jim lay taut as a steel band under tension. His skin felt hot and dry. He got out of bed and went to the bathroom for a drink of water, then fumbled in the medicine cabinet for a sleeping pill. He took one, gulping down a full glass of water afterward. Back in bed, he found the frigid gap still between them.

  “Jim,” she said, “I’d give anything on earth if I could trust you again.”

  And he realized that the gay, twittering woman, abrim with a hundred ventures, was no longer with him. This Martha was withdrawn, lonely, remote. He put his hand on the smooth curve of her hip, but she thrust it away and turned on her stomach. She began to sob, quietly, into the pillow. Then the crying became louder, and her body twitched with the convulsive sounds in her throat. Jim sensed that the tears were flowing from her eyes and that her pillow was becoming wet. He put both arms around her and drew her into the hollow of his body. She did not resist. She merely lay inert, like a lifeless bundle. Slowly the crying faded into scattered sobs and her muscles began to relax. At last she wriggled slightly, moving closer to him. Then her breathing became rhythmic, and she fell asleep in the nest of her husband, as she had done night after night for more than fourteen years.

  But Jim still lay awake while distorted images moved through his mind. He could see Martha, small and frail, her cloth coat clasped about her throat. He could see Rita sitting stiffly in her Georgetown parlor, and he could see Pat O’Malley’s drooping jowls through a haze of cigar smoke. Behind it all there came and went the vision of a huge window and a blanket of snow stretching away from Aspen lodge toward a pale horizon. It was almost an hour before the sleeping pill took effect.

  Jim felt prickly and unrested the next morning. His head throbbed with each passage of the electric shaver over his jawbone. And then, as he finished shaving, the thought came to him.

  Of course. It was the only honorable way. He had to do it. Why hadn’t he realized it before? It was so simple. Unless he took the step, his situation was impossibly compromising and stultifying. The decision made, he felt somewhat better, and he hurried his dressing, anxious to get the scene over with.

  Chinky had left for school, and Martha was alone at the breakfast table in the little alcove with its gingham curtains. Martha’s face was drawn, but her snub nose crinkled when she saw him, and she smiled shyly. Steam curled from the cup of coffee by his place. Martha slid the Post across the table toward him. The morning routine was unchanged, as though there had been no night of sobbing.

  “The President is going to meet Zuchek,” she said.

  “I know,” said Jim. “That’s why I had to talk to O’Malley last night…” He checked himself, then met her eyes across the table.

  “Marty,” he said, “I’m not going to run for vice-president, Mark Hollenbach or no Mark Hollenbach. I’m going to tell him this morning.”

  Her pale lashes fell and she avoided looking at him. He frowned, puzzled for a moment, but then he knew. Of course, she thought he couldn’t run for vice-president because of fear that the affair with Rita would be exposed.

  Martha raised her head and smiled, a weary smile, but a fond one. Quickly she moved around the table, buried her head against his neck and kissed him. Her arms held him, and he could feel moisture from her eyes.

  “Thank you, Jim,” she whispered. “I love you so. And I’ve been foolish too. Too much dashing around. Too many zombie clubs. Some of them have got to go.”

  “Take it easy, Marty,” he said. “I like you when you’re excited and busy. It’s your way.”

  She shook her head, rubbing his nose with hers. “But not too busy. From now on, my big project is you.”

  He grinned. “Well, maybe the Committee for More Effective Urban Renewal could get along without you.”

  “And the embassy tour and the Smith alumni fund drive too,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  She kissed his cheek. “Please, Jim,” she whispered softly, “please don’t ever leave me again.”

  “Never, Marty.” And this time he felt he meant it, as he had never meant anything before in his life.

  And then, while the ringlets of her hair still brushed his cheeks, he realized, with a shock, that she was expressing gratitude. She believed that he’d decided to abandon the vice-presidency so that no scandal would embarrass his wife. She must think he feared a campaign revelation of the Rita affair and that he was determined to spare his wife the injury to her pride. Lord, what a slithery mess this was getting to be. First, Martha thought he lied about the affair being over, and now she was embracing him as an instant hero.

  Actually, he thought, concern for Martha had little to do with his decision. Nor concern for Rita, nor for himself, for that matter. What really impelled him was the threat to the count
ry and his own responsibility to function as a free agent. Who would ever understand that? Would anybody? The feeling returned, the feeling he experienced fitfully earlier—that of a noose being tightened slowly but irresistibly about his neck. He could feel Martha’s arms still about him, and he wondered if he could any longer trust his own impulses.

  A feeling not unlike panic closed about him, but he made an effort to ward it off. One step at a time, Jim, he told himself. He kissed Martha and pushed her gently away.

  “Honey,” he said, “I might as well get it over with. I’m going up to the den and call the White House.”

  Rose Ellen’s drawl seemed filmed by sleep. The President’s personal secretary was not enthusiastic about her employer’s early-morning work habits.

  “This is Jim MacVeagh,” Jim said. “Could you let me talk to him, Rose Ellen? I can’t say it’s urgent, but it is very important.”

  “We’re telepathic, Senatah,” she said. “The President just asked me to get you out of bed.”

  “Oh?”

  The President’s voice came on, fresh but cold. “All right, Senator.” He snapped the words out.

  Jim plunged ahead. “Mr. President, I’ve decided that I cannot run for vice-president. I say this most regretfully, sir, with sincere appreciation for your confidence in me, but I just can’t do it. I’ve given this a lot of thought, Mr. President—”

  “Never mind.” Hollenbach’s voice cut in, sharp as a knife. “Just a minute…” Hollenbach turned from the phone. “Would you mind leaving the room, Rose Ellen,” MacVeagh heard him say. “I want to talk to Senator MacVeagh in private, please.”

  There was a pause. Then Hollenbach turned back to the mouthpiece. “She called it telepathy. It certainly was. I was just about to call you to tell you the same thing, MacVeagh.”