Night of Camp David Read online

  MacVeagh frowned in the dark and looked at Hollenbach as though seeing him for the first time. What the devil…

  “Spence is an ingrate,” continued Hollenbach. “He’s had the run of the White House, four or five exclusive stories. I’ve given him at least an hour of my valuable time in two separate interviews. And then to repay the favor with a crack like that. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you…”

  Hollenbach halted and watched the firelight for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was still edged. “I’m beginning to wonder, Jim, if there isn’t some kind of conspiracy afoot to discredit me in the eyes of the country. First O’Malley’s outrageous action and now this. And these aren’t isolated cases, believe me. I could tell you of other instances…” His voice trailed off, and when he resumed it was just above a whisper. “Other men have tried…I know…I’ve had to take steps to protect myself. It’s almost as if there were a net closing…”

  Hollenbach’s voice slid away. He sat brooding, his legs outstretched toward the fire, his thin face, tautly furrowed, held in dim profile to MacVeagh. There was a canyon of stillness between them.

  “Damn it!” The President’s curse exploded in the quiet room, and MacVeagh realized that this was the first time he had ever heard Hollenbach swear. “O’Malley is the worst. He was more than a vice-president. He was part of the family, privy to every decision and secret of the administration. No president ever treated his vice-president with the courtesy and solicitude I gave to Pat O’Malley. And then, like a murdering brother, he turned on me and tried to crucify me with his filthy little deals. And then he had the audacity to stand in my White House office Tuesday night and say that he was sorry. Sorry! When he plotted the whole sordid business, from start to finish, in an effort to defeat me in November. Well, it didn’t work. Thank God, the American people have a conscience, which is something that can’t be said for a man who was never anything but a Pittsburgh ward boss.”

  The President paused for breath, then he plunged on. “It proves the need for a law that would let law-enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, monitor telephone calls. With that law on the books, O’Malley never could have got away with that arena deal. When he made those calls to the chairman—and talked to Jilinsky—we’d have known something was up and could have moved in to stop it.”

  Tap the telephone of the Vice-President? Jim felt glazed and numb, as though he were midway in a dream where the scenes kept repeating themselves endlessly. The man beside him, speaking with measured fury, seemed an utter stranger, and he wondered what had become of the self-assured, radiant Mark Hollenbach. Whatever the object of this Saturday night session, thought MacVeagh, it was lost now. Mark needed sleep and rest.

  “I think perhaps I’d better go,” said Jim. “We can have our talk another time.”

  Hollenbach looked startled. He swung around to face MacVeagh, stared at him a moment, then burst into laughter. It was the deep, hearty, familiar laugh that MacVeagh had heard a dozen times.

  “Oh, excuse me, Jim,” he said. “I had no right to foist one of my moods on you. You’re up here to learn about our plans. Thank goodness, you’re a new breed. With Hollenbach and MacVeagh, a team of the old and the new, it will be a brand-new administration next January. The O’Malleys, the Spences, and the rest will be forgotten. We’ve got things to do, boy.”

  Hollenbach rose, took several long strides and swung around, his back to the fireplace. He stood framed in the gossamer light cast by the rosy mound of coals, and an easy, relaxed smile spread over his face. He thumped the heels of his palms together. MacVeagh felt a quick easing of tension, as though someone had slapped his back in a moment of fright. The President he knew and admired was back again.

  “Jim,” Hollenbach said slowly, “I want my second term to be a great one. I want intelligent men around me, men who can think long-range, as I said, and I want a vice-president who can grasp new concepts without being shackled by prejudice. Look, let me explain it—and this is the reason I wanted you up here tonight.

  “Despite our prosperity, this country is in deep trouble—abroad. We all recognize that. The changes in the world are violent ones, and they’re hurtling along with a speed unknown before in history. We’ve got to find an anchor to help ride out the storm. We’ve been searching since the end of World War II—foreign aid, alliances, containment, massive retaliation—but we’ve never found one. But, Jim, I think I’ve found the anchor. I can’t mention it before the election. The people will have to be educated up to it. But after the second inauguration, I’ll reveal it.”

  The President was exuberant now. The familiar flush came to his cheeks and his eyes shone like the dropping coals in the fireplace behind him. He was talking swiftly, occasionally glancing at MacVeagh, but for the most part speaking toward the great window as though addressing a multitude beyond. Jim knew the signs. The President was in the vise of one of his ideas, and the intellectual seizure became a physical emotion, a force in the room.

  “I call it the grand concept, Jim,” said Hollenbach, “or the concept of Aspen, if you will, since I first thought of it here one night.”

  The President paused. There was no sound in the room save for a sputter amid the fireplace coals. Hollenbach’s eyes seemed fastened on a distant point beyond the picture window. Jim felt a tremor of anticipation. He leaned forward on the sofa.

  “The idea,” continued Hollenbach, “is to forge the mightiest core of power the world has ever known. Not just an alliance, but a union—a real union, political, economic, social—of the great free nations of the globe.”

  Hollenbach glanced at him, and Jim knew a comment was called for.

  “If you can name the great nations, Mr. President, you’re a genius.” He kept his tone light, but he found himself caught up in Hollenbach’s enthusiasm. “After the United States, I add Russia and Red China and then I run out. And I assume you’re not talking about the Communists.”

  “No. No.” Hollenbach flung an arm toward one end of the room. “Look to the north, Jim Canada! Canada!”

  “A union with Canada?” MacVeagh squinted at his wrist watch in the gloom. 10:15. A little late for bizarre jokes, he thought.

  “Right. A union with Canada.” Hollenbach stared at MacVeagh, and Jim could sense, if he could not see, an intensity in the gaze.

  “Canada is the wealthiest nation on earth.” Hollenbach’s words raced after one another. His eyes were fixed on MacVeagh’s and he tensed again as he had when speaking of Spence and O’Malley. “The mineral riches under her soil are incredible in their immensity. Even with modern demands, they are well-nigh inexhaustible. Believe me, Jim, Canada will be the seat of power in the next century and, properly exploited and conserved, her riches can go on for a thousand years.”

  The fervor seemed to radiate from Hollenbach now, almost as real as the circle of firelight. MacVeagh wondered why he himself never heaved with such profound emotion. Perhaps that was the difference between the leader and the led. He tried to shake the spell by breaking into the President’s hurrying monologue.

  “The new imperialism, huh?” he asked.

  Hollenbach eyed him suspiciously for an instant, but suspicion melted quickly and the President’s features were gripped anew in trembling excitement.

  “An enlightened imperialism, yes, in a way,” he said, “but really a union of survival for both countries. But Canada is only part of it, Jim. Canada is latent power. What this country needs almost as badly as more power is character and stability. For a perfect union, we also need Scandinavia.”

  “We need what?” MacVeagh experienced an odd floating sensation as he often did when witnesses before his Senate subcommittee drifted into the abstruse jargon of the space age.

  “Scandinavia.” The President’s voice quivered, and with spread fingers he pressed hard against his hips. “Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, to be specific. They will brin
g us the character and the discipline we so sadly lack. I know these people, Jim. I’m of German extraction, but many generations ago my people were Swedes who emigrated to Germany….Your wife’s of Swedish stock, isn’t she?”

  MacVeagh nodded a hypnotic assent.

  “You know what I mean then. You see, Canada will bring us the power for the future, Scandinavia the character, the steadiness….It’s the grand concept for survival…a union of know-how, that’s us, with power and character…”

  Hollenbach sped on like a runaway train, barely pausing for breath, leaving no gaps into which MacVeagh could move with a question. He appeared to anticipate all inquiries. Why not England? Great Britain was finished as a major power, attenuated, effete, jaded. All that the English had to contribute—and it had been tremendous in its day—America already had absorbed. England was weak, introspective, plagued by memories of faded glory. France was too flighty and defensive, inclined to bicker any decision to death unless it emanated from Paris. Italy had culture, but no power or root stability. Germany, proud of her industrial growth, was arrogant and domineering again….But with the merger of know-how, power and character, the United States, Canada and Scandinavia, the new nation under one parliament and one president could keep the peace for centuries. The president of the union should be a man who dreamed the dreams of giants. This was the grand concept. To it, Mark Hollenbach would dedicate his entire second term, his life if necessary. It was the only sensible bulwark against creeping Communism in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In union, America would survive and prosper. Alone, shielded only by the paper ramparts of NATO, SEATO and the rest, America would perish.

  It was after eleven o’clock when Hollenbach concluded on a swelling evangelical note. His face flamed like the firelight, his fists were clenched and sweat studded his forehead. Though the effort had been the President’s, MacVeagh felt exhausted. The silence in the long, low room had a clamor of its own. A gust of wind raised a flurry of old snow beside the lodge and the snow swept high on the window like frozen lightning. Bewildered, MacVeagh felt as though his head were stuffed with wool. He searched for words.

  “That’s an awful lot to take in one night, Mr. President,” he said lamely.

  “Of course it is.” The President spoke softly, sympathetically, some of the heat seeming to drain from him.

  “But I can’t understand why you exclude England, France and Germany from such a union,” said MacVeagh. That wasn’t all he didn’t understand, but he felt like an ant before a confusingly mammoth cake. He had to nibble somewhere.

  “I only exclude Europe at the start,” said Hollenbach, and his face quickly lighted again. “Right now, Europe has nothing to give us. But once we build the fortress of Aspen—the United States, Canada and Scandinavia—I predict that the nations of Europe will pound at the door to get in. And if they don’t, we’ll have the power to force them into the new nation.”

  “Force?” MacVeagh’s voice sounded distant to his own ears.

  “Yes, force.” Hollenbach smashed a fist into the palm of his other hand.

  “You mean military force, Mr. President?”

  “Only if necessary, and I doubt it ever would be. There are other kinds of pressure, trade duties and barriers, financial measures, economic sanctions if you will. But, never fear, Jim. England, France and Germany, and the Low Countries too, can be brought to heel. The union of Aspen will have the force to exert its will. We’ll be the lighthouse of the world, a beacon of peace for centuries.”

  “Have you thought about the type of man who would lead such a union, the prime minister or the president, I think you said?”

  “Yes, I have.” Hollenbach turned his face upward and his eyes seemed to measure the beams above him. “He should, of course, be a man above national boundaries, a dedicated man, an idealist perhaps, yet a practical politician. The Scandinavians have produced many of that type, some of whom have served devotedly at the United Nations. I’m not sure, Jim, but if I could see the union come to life in my second term, I would, of course, do everything humanly possible to help it through the formative years. If the call came to lead, I would not shirk my responsibility.”

  “I see.” MacVeagh saw that Hollenbach’s sensitive features were rapt, as though infused by a holy vision. “As I said, Mr. President, that’s an awful lot to absorb in one session.”

  “Sleep on it, Jim,” advised Hollenbach quietly. “You’re the first man I’ve confided in, and I’ve done it because I want us to be true partners of government. Naturally, the grand concept is difficult to assimilate, all in one dose. You’ll need to think about it, but when you have you’ll come to the same conclusion I have. Together, Jim, we can save this country and change the course of history for centuries to come.”

  “I certainly will think about it, Mr. President.” He knew his words sounded remote and trifling, but he could think of nothing else to say. His thoughts failed to navigate properly in his head of wool.

  Hollenbach waggled a warning finger at him. “That’s all between us, Jim. Keep it to yourself. There are people who are out to get me, and the grand concept—if it leaks out too early without proper explanation—could be used against me. If little men, mean little men of no vision like the O’Malleys, the Spences and the others, if they got hold of it, I could be made to look the fool.” He shook himself, as though to ward off the mere mention of O’Malley and Spence.

  “I realize that, Mr. President,” said MacVeagh.

  Hollenbach put an arm around MacVeagh’s shoulders and guided him toward the door. “I suppose you’ll want to get home to your waiting wife,” he said. “Besides, Evelyn is coming up early tomorrow. We’re going to try to relax for a day. I owe her the day. She deserves it. She doesn’t get many any more.”

  Hollenbach called for the car, and while they waited, he steered MacVeagh to a wall bookcase, and drew out an object from a small case on a shelf. He held it out, and in the flickers of firelight Jim saw that it was a silver fountain pen.

  “I used that to sign the last nuclear treaty,” said Hollenbach, “but someday I want to use it to sign the new union into life. I would dearly wish that the union could come into existence right in this room—the union and the creation of Aspen.”

  The President swept his arm toward the big window, and Jim could see the gaunt, leafless trees casting their intricate shadows in the moonlight. In the distance the next mountain range shouldered the gray sky under a headdress of tiny stars. Hollenbach sighed.

  “I love it here,” he said. “It’s the only place to breathe the first life into the union. Until then, Jim, I want you to keep the fountain pen. Let it be our talisman, and let’s hope it brings good luck to a president and a vice-president who’ve got mountains of work to do.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Jim fondled the pen, then slid it into a pocket of his windbreaker.

  The President opened the door. The car was there with Luther Smith at the wheel again. Hollenbach shook MacVeagh’s hand in parting.

  “Remember, Jim, together you and I can do great things for our country.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  MacVeagh climbed into the back seat of the limousine. As they passed the guardhouse and the saluting Marine, Smith attempted to open a conversation, but Jim turned it aside and sat staring out the window. He cupped his chin in one hand and sat immobile, almost transfixed, and only half saw the trunks of trees march by as the car twisted and turned down the mountain road and sped into the high valley and through the darkened town of Thurmont.

  His thoughts became weird flashes which changed abruptly like a kaleidoscope. Sweden, maroon on a map, Norway in green. A vice-president with a wife of Swedish stock….My God, he hadn’t caught the significance. Could that be his link with the grand concept?…Mark Hollenbach, his crew cut bristling like a mop of spikes, striding toward Hudson Bay in a black turtleneck sweater. Walking, walking, with ea
rphones strapped to his head and the murmurs of a thousand exotic conversations pouring in from telephone lines across the continent. O’Malley, Spence and the Chicago banker, Davidge, standing mute and stunned in the background….Hollenbach on a dais in Stockholm, wearing robes of royal purple, and studying a military map of Europe with a cluster of generals in strange uniforms….

  Then Jim saw a medic’s hut in Viet Nam, and now, for the first time, he did not resist the full memory. The picture formed. A corporal, in the early grip of fever, leaped from his cot and, arms waving crazily, cried that he was being pursued by snakes. Then he began to babble of a shapeless scheme for victory. A doctor and two nurses seized him and the man soon collapsed on his cot again in a spasm of chills, but the grotesque scene remained etched in a recess of MacVeagh’s memory.

  Through the night, speeding on the superhighway below Frederick, another thought formed, ugly, menacing. He could not banish it, even though it brought a knotting of his stomach muscles, the way fear always affected him. He felt shattered, undone, and he knew he needed the advice of someone he could trust. Pat O’Malley? No, not Pat, although it was ironic that he should think first of the man he was tapped to succeed. Grady Cavanaugh, the Supreme Court justice with whom he’d fished and philosophized? No, not on this problem.

  Maybe Paul Griscom? Yes. Griscom, the discreet old political lawyer who wore his clothes like an unmade bed. He’d been consulted by every administration since Harry Truman’s and his clients stretched from Seattle to New Delhi. R. Paul Griscom. He would call him first thing in the morning. Then he realized why he had selected Griscom. The old lawyer was not only a friend of his but a close family friend of President Mark Hollenbach.

  In his jacket pocket Jim felt the fountain pen—talisman of Aspen. Warm waves of air blew over him from the car’s rear heater, but he found himself shivering, and he knew it was the clutch of fear. Jim MacVeagh had reached the conclusion that the President of the United States was insane.