Memorial Bridge

by James Carroll

It was embarrassing. All around her, uniformed young men and women paraded by while she had to stand at the guard's table as he telephoned. Someone had to come down from Sean's office and sign her in. She waited.

  At last Michael Packard came. The sight of his bright, smiling face relieved her, and when he opened his arms, she went into them as if that hallway were the platform of a train station. How did he know she needed to be welcomed? For twenty-five years Michael had been their friend, obviously far more Sean's than hers, but Cass felt a rare dose of her fondness for him. She had an impulse to confide in him, but she instantly recognized it for what it was—a wish to recruit Michael as her ally.

  "What's wrong?" Packard asked after signing her in and while leading her into the Pentagon.

  "I have to see Sean right away."

  "About Richard?"

  "Yes. I've just come from Occoquan."

  "Is he all right?"

  "How could he be? That place is a dungeon."

  "So is this place, Cass." Packard said this without slowing down. He had Cass fiercely by the elbow. "The President finally replaced Westmoreland. They just announced it. He'll be coming home week after next—but guess what? He's the new chairman."

  "What?"

  "That's right. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Westmoreland! After Khe Sanh!"

  The siege of Khe Sanh, begun at Tet, had gone on until April. Five thousand bombs a day had been dropped around Khe Sanh, "the most concentrated bombing in the history of warfare," as Westmoreland put it. For two miles in every direction the once lovely hills had become a moonscape. When at last the enemy had lifted the siege, Westmoreland had stunned every man in the American military by ordering the "anchor base" abandoned—the base for which more than ten thousand men had died. To civilians Tet had revealed the absurdity of the war, but to soldiers Khe Sanh had.

  But Cass was not thinking of Khe Sanh. "Westmoreland? But the war goes worse than ever. There are a thousand men a month being killed now."

  "You know your numbers, Cass."

  "Every mother knows them."

  Packard stopped her. Military men continued to flow past them, parting slightly, like a current of water around an obstacle. "The war is not my point just now, Cass. I'm talking about Sean. I wouldn't have brought it up to you but, well, here you are. McNamara is gone. Clifford has no interest in defending DIA against other agencies that have been trying to kill it since the beginning. And add to that Westmoreland, who will be Sean's direct superior now, after what they've been through."

  "You want me to worry about Sean? Is that why you're telling me this? How can you expect me to worry about Sean?"

  "Somebody has to. They're going to scapegoat him, Cass. The Tet postmortems landed on military intelligence as the key failure, Sean's failure. Not Westmoreland's. Not Johnson's. As if Sean hadn't continually raised questions and sounded warnings."

  "I think Sean accepts his part of the responsibility."

  "That's my point. Everybody is covering his ass except Sean. He's the only one not desperately trying to protect himself. And so he's vulnerable. Between CIA and JCS they're going to eat him alive, and OSD, under Clark Clifford, will let them. Sean is alone here now. Totally alone."

  "Here? Here? He has you, Michael, doesn't he?"

  "Until the finish, yes. But I'm just—"

  "Then he has more than some others I could name."

  "You mean Richard?"

  "For one." If they stood there, a pair of stanchions in the stream of humans, for a hundred years, she would not have added, "And for another, me." But also, for a hundred years—an eon of self-pity—she would have thought it.

  At Sean's office Packard opened the door for her, but he remained outside. Two other officers, who'd been looking at charts spread on the conference table, took their cue from Sean's dismissing toss of the head and left. When the door closed it was just the two of them.

  "I've seen Richard," she said.

  Sean came around the table to pull a pair of chairs together. He held one for her and she sat. Then he sat next to her, away from his desk and away from the table. At their feet, woven into the rich blue rug, was the DIA seal: the earth, the torch of knowledge, the two atomic ellipses and the olive branch for peace.

  Sean asked quietly, "He agreed to see you?"

  Cass nodded.

  Sean, waiting for her to explain, lit a cigarette.

  She said, "Aren't you going to ask how he is?"

  "How is he?"

  "He's good. He's better than I thought he'd be."

  "I'm glad."

  "You don't seem it. You don't act like he's anything to do with you."

  "Look, Cass, you arrive at my office unannounced, I automatically assume there's something wrong. I'm waiting for you to tell me what it is."

  "Richard sent me here to ask you something."

  "What?"

  "He wants to see you. He asked me to tell you that he needs you."

  Whatever Sean's reaction was, he hid it by putting his cigarette to his mouth. The smoke obscured him further.

  "Well?"

  "What do you mean 'well,' Cass? What can I possibly say to that?"

  "You can say, 'My son needs me. I'll go to him.'"

  "But you know better than anyone how impossible that would be."

  "Your only son is in a terrible jail, and the rest of his life depends on how his trouble is resolved, and he's asking you to help him. Which is impossible. Everything is impossible, Sean. Don't you see? Which means now you can do what you want to do."

  "You're talking nonsense, Cass." Dillon stood abruptly, crossed to his desk and leaned to his intercom. "Send in some coffee, Jane, would you please?"

  Cass watched him as he went to the window, to stand there looking out, his back resolutely toward her. To his left was a gold-tipped flagstaff from which hung the blue and silver flag of his rank. In another age that flag would have followed him into battle. She waited.

  The secretary entered with the coffee service, placed it on the conference table and, with no direction from either Sean or Cass, left.

  Sean ignored the coffee.

  Cass stood, crossed to it and poured. She carried his cup and hers over to the window. Without a word she handed him his.

  They stood side by side, looking silently out the window, toward the river and Memorial Bridge. Cass, speaking almost absently, said, "Before we ever came here, you did something that was against your conscience. I never asked you to do it and we never talked about it, but you did it for me."

  "You mean Buckley, the lies I told to get him."

  "Of course."

  "This is different, Cass."

  "I know. You don't have to arrange someone's imprisonment this time. Quite the opposite."

  But Sean was shaking his head. "By my lights Richard is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Until he's prepared to renounce his association with people who are helping Hanoi, I can't have anything to do with him."

  Cass put her cup onto her saucer. The clink of the china resounded, aural punctuation. "Then I've been wrong all these years."

  "What?"

  "About you. I've been wrong. I've thought you acted against Buckley for me because of what he had done to my uncle. But now I see you did it for yourself. You lied to the priest. You used my illegal transcripts. You manipulated the law. But it wasn't for me. You did it for yourself."

  "Why are you saying these things?"

  "Because if you won't violate your precious conscience for your son, you certainly wouldn't have for me. What I see, Sean, is that you've never cared about anyone but yourself, and that's the awful truth behind the shell of your famous integrity. Otherwise you would jump at the chance to go to your son when he asks for you."

  "But he's guilty, Cass. He's a draft dodger. Nothing I do can change that. His future is at stake, yes. But he's in charge of it. He's not our little boy anymore. He has chosen to defy the government in a way that the government simply cannot allow. The government has to land
on him. Its ability to field an army depends on the Selective Service System holding. Richard has to go to jail. He should go to jail."

  "And you would not consider asking Mr. Hoover or Ramsey Clark to intervene, this once, for—"

  "Of course I wouldn't."

  "It's that 'of course' I hate in you."

  "It has always been there, Cass."

  She shook her head. "Once it wasn't."

  Cass turned and crossed to the conference table and put her cup down on the tray. She did so carefully, without flamboyance. Then she picked up her bag and started toward the door.

  "Cass?"

  She stopped, her back toward him.

  But he could not think what he wanted to say.

  She left.

  Dillon's colleagues returned to the room and they resumed their discussion of the current deployment of North Vietnamese regulars in the South. The assessment was crucial for Averell Harriman at the peace talks in Paris. But Dillon's mind was only half focused on the charts and maps before him.

  It was after three o'clock before he broke free to call her. "Look," he began, "you said some things I need to answer."

  "Sean, I suggest you drop it. I'm not interested in—"

  "I can't drop it. Now listen to me. You brought up Buckley. And I've been thinking. You were right. I didn't do it for you. I set him up because I hated him. I hated him for what he'd done to your uncle." Dillon saw the flash of an image, a pale mangled corpse dripping beside the blood pit. "And for what he'd done to Doc Riley. But you're right, it was my hatred. And I acted on it as I did because, if the law protected him, it was wrong. It seemed that simple to me. If the law protected Buckley, the law was wrong. And Cass, do you know what? I do not regret having manipulated the law to get him. And if I lied, I haven't regretted that either. Buckley died in prison after more than twenty years. I'm sorry the doctors couldn't cure his cancer because he deserves to be in prison still. That's the first thing I wanted to tell you."

  Dillon moved the phone receiver to the other side of his face, from the hand that was wet to the one that was dry. He was standing in that same window, looking out at the river and the bridge. The black spire of Georgetown in the distance reminded him of the old Jesuit, of the sparrow in the hall.

  "And the second thing is, you were wrong when you said I'd never put aside my conscience for you. Cass, you are my conscience. From the very beginning, you've been that to me. Are you listening?"

  "Yes. Then I have to ask you something, if that's what I am to you. Something I swore I'd never ask."

  "What?"

  "How can you continue to be a part of this war?"

  Silence. Dillon knew she'd never have dared ask him that if they'd been face to face.

  "The war, Sean. You hate it as much as Richard does. How can you still be a part of it?"

  "Cass, I have no choice."

  "You do! You do! You could resign!"

  "Cass, the peace talks are on in Paris. What happens there can justify all that's happened up till now, all the killing, everything! I'm part of that still, don't you see? I help with those talks. I keep our people on top of what the other side is really doing. My work has never mattered more. Don't you understand? The peace talks are what will end the war. Not protests. I don't resign, because if I did, I wouldn't be quitting on President Johnson or General Westmoreland, but on hundreds of thousands of men who are still in terrible danger. They're the ones I think of now. If it was in my power to just bring them home today, I would. I helped get them there. I have to help get them home."

  "Get them home by denouncing the war."

  "That would give Hanoi another reason not to settle. I can't be a part of that. Besides, critics of the war are a dime a dozen."

  "So are subservient generals, Sean. I hate to say it, but you are kidding yourself."

  "Maybe so, Cass, maybe so. But it's not subservience I'm known for lately. I've seen everything I've believed in and given my life to not only corrupted but betrayed. And it breaks my heart. Do you hear me?"

  "Yes."

  "We're nearly drowned in lies over here. I know that better than anyone. Mostly, we've lied to ourselves. Well, that is something it's still my job to change. For me to walk away to preserve what little is left of my own integrity, as if I'm better than these others, would be a last betrayal. I have no illusions, Cass. But there are peace talks on in Paris. They are the best chance we have. That's why I stay."

  "In Paris, all they do is argue over the shape of the table."

  "That's not true. That's all the press sees happening. It's a potential breakthrough, Cass, take my word for it."

  "And you want to see it through because of the boys."

  "That's right."

  "And what about your boy?"

  "That's why I called you. I've been thinking about it. And I think there is something I can do, something you suggested."

  "What?"

  "Go to Hoover. Ask him to get the case against Richard dropped. I'm on my way there now."

  "That's not what Richard would—"

  "He'll never know, Cass. It's the best thing I can do for him. The government has plenty of discretion in these cases. They don't prosecute every violator, and there's no reason Richard shouldn't be one who draws a bye. Once he's out, then I'll see him."

  Cass did not respond at first, her feelings were so complicated. But finally this was what she wanted, wasn't it? Richard out of that hateful jail? What did it matter, compared to that, that Sean was otherwise so wrong?

  The Justice Department on Ninth Street—how many coundess times had he entered it, always with a clip in his step? After the Pentagon, it seemed a modest building. Even on Pennsylvania Avenue, with the temple-like National Archives looming to the east and the massive Victorian oddity, the old post office, to the west, Justice hardly registered as grand. But to Dillon, the halls of that building, unlike any other in Washington, were hallowed. Even now, when so few of his illusions remained intact, he could not enter the Justice Building without feeling a rush of affirmation. How different his life would have been if he'd remained here as a Bureau man. He would not have been an outsider all these years, for one thing. And his exercise of power would not have been thwarted at every turn by small-minded military turf-defenders.

  But Dillon laughed, chiding himself at once. Exercise of power? If he'd stayed in the Bureau, he'd have had no problem with that, since he'd have had no power. Work for Hoover? Not a chance.

  But working with him had been something else. Hoover and Dillon each occupied chairs on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where their intimacy had been implicit. Even as the aging FBI director had become a parody of himself, obviously ill equipped for the era of civil rights and political dissent, Dillon's respect for him held. Compared with the intimidated military men who made every decision with a furtive eye up the chain of command, Hoover's cantankerous willingness to offend seemed precious to Dillon.

  The wall at the elevator was decorated with bronze bas-relief panels portraying the great lawgivers of history: Moses, Hammurabi, Justinian. As familiar emblems of the system to which he was devoted, the figures reassured him. Though he had come here explicitly to bend that system to his own benefit, he felt remarkably at peace. Unlike nearly everyone else in that city, Dillon had never cashed in a chit for himself, as Hoover would know better than anyone. Yet to do so now seemed wholly right. Hoover regarded himself as Dillon's mentor. It would please him to be asked for help, and to offer it. Dillon rode the elevator up to the director's floor, full of confidence.

  At the door to Hoover's outer office, he hesitated for a second to savor the difference it was to come here in the uniform of a three-star general. To young agents, this same door could seem a gate of hell.

  Miss Gandy greeted Sean with twinkling affection, but she stunned him then by saying that Hoover wasn't there.

  "But you told me yourself not an hour ago that he would see me now."

  "That was before
, General. The director had to leave. He said that you should go into Mr. Peterson's office and talk to him."

  "Peterson?"

  Walt Peterson was the deputy assistant director for domestic intelligence, a position Dillon himself had held at the end of the war. Dillon barely knew Peterson. As he left Miss Gandy, he fended the certainty that he'd just been shunted aside. He knew damn well this had happened before. His current troubles at the Pentagon had begun when McNamara started sloughing him off to deputies. At Peterson's office, the secretary was ready, and she showed him in with nervous efficiency.

  "Hey, Sean, how are you?" Peterson came at him with outstretched hand, like a salesman.

  "I'm well, Walt. Nice to see you."

  The two men took chairs opposite each other.

  "The director was called away, I guess. He asked me to see you. What's up?"

  Sean shook his head. "Not much point in my raising the thing with you, Walt. It's personal. I indicated as much to Miss Gandy, and I have to assume the director knew that. It makes no sense that he referred me to you."

  "Unless it involves your son."

  Peterson's direct statement caught Sean off guard. But then he understood how obvious it was. Hoover's refusal to see him was already a refusal to help Richard.

  Dillon lit a cigarette to calm himself. "Why the referral to you, Walt? My son is a two-bit draft dodger, not in DI's purview. I'd have expected to be passed along to the fugitive section."

  "Actually, these recent draft cases are on our docket. There's a difference between a draft dodger and a resister. I'm sorry to say, Sean, your boy mixed himself up with some of the wrong people. He's involved with a subversive group."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "It calls itself Resist. It has cells in cities all across the country. It's an out-and-out revolutionary organization, committed to the overthrow of the entire Selective Service System. And we have reason to think it is an organization run by foreign operatives."

  Despite a wave of nausea, Dillon laughed. "Foreign operatives! Walt, listen to yourself. You think Moscow is behind all these kids taking off for Canada? Jesus, Peterson. Who are you getting your briefs from? Herb Philbrick?"