Night of Camp David

by Fletcher Knebel

  “Well,” said Cavanaugh after a moment, “what should we do?”

  Nicholson got up from his chair, his movements cumbersome, officious.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he said. “I’m going to leave. I’ve had enough.”

  There was astonishment on every face. Nicholson held the back of his chair and spoke as though addressing a sizable audience.

  “I don’t know what is prompting Senator MacVeagh,” said Nicholson, “whether it’s an overly suspicious mind or something more devious. I note that he has withdrawn from the vice-presidential contest, a curious move to my mind. Then I find this business of Mrs. Krasicki and the Cousins and King story a trifle too much to digest right now. I’m not sure just what’s going on, but I don’t like it, gentlemen.

  “I refuse to sit here any longer and listen to more maligning of a great president. I think these aspersions on his mental condition are fantastic, and I think this meeting damn near amounts to sedition. Frankly, I feel disloyal and unclean for having taken part in it.”

  With that, Speaker Nicholson turned and walked from the room in his slow, lumbering gait. Jim, in a flash, thought of the high irony of Nicholson’s defending Hollenbach when the President at Camp David had dismissed Nicholson as “too heavy”: “He smothers me with that elephantine way of his.”

  The five remaining men sat stunned. Senator Gullion tried a light remark. “Well, there goes the House. We’re left with no shelter.” But nobody smiled.

  “I think,” said Cavanaugh at last, “that I favor some more inquiries. Just how that should be done I’m not sure, but perhaps we should all keep our ears open, make what discreet soundings we can, and then meet back here again in a week. What do you say?”

  “No,” said Odium. “I favor dropping the whole thing right here. I’m not as upset about all this as Nick is, and I appreciate Jim’s effort to do his duty as he sees it. If he comes up with anything more, I’ll be glad to listen, but as of now I just don’t think there’s enough substance to his story.”

  “But the whole pattern, Fred,” said Cavanaugh. “There does seem to be a pattern of instability, at least. I’m worried enough…or uncertain enough…to proceed further.”

  “Look,” said Odium. He had dropped his inquisitional manner. “Nobody is normal, and even if we could find a completely normal president, would we want him that way? Can any man be an outstanding leader who doesn’t have some flights of imagination, some ideas that set him apart? I doubt it. At any rate, this thing is too vaporous for me. I just can’t get my fingers on anything solid.”

  “I agree,” said Gullion, “and it’s probably the first time in my life I ever agreed with Fred on anything.”

  “You build a swimming pool, Sterling,” said Odium with a derisive chuckle, “and someday I might come and integrate it for you.”

  “It’s a bargain.” Gullion’s coppery features split in a wide grin.

  MacVeagh experienced an empty feeling. The country faced one of its greatest perils and these men, cynically disbelieving, were treating it all as a joke.

  “My hands are tied,” said O’Malley. “Because of my own compromising situation on the arena, we all know I can’t act without the support of you men. Personally, I do have doubts about the President’s mental processes, but doubts aren’t enough in a case of this kind. I propose that Jim and I stay out of this, and that the other three of you take a vote. Should we continue the inquiry or drop it right here?”

  “I vote to continue,” said Cavanaugh.

  “I say drop it,” said Odium.

  “Ditto,” said Gullion.

  Vice-President O’Malley slapped the arm of his chair as though with a gavel. “Meeting’s adjourned,” he said.

  Each man shook MacVeagh’s hand in friendly fashion, and Odium even gave his arm a squeeze as he whispered, “I’m sorry I put the heat on you and Rita, but I had to know whether you were playing straight with us.” But the parting was misery for Jim. He felt that he’d lost not only the battle but the war. And now, MacVeagh was sure, several other people, Nicholson especially, either thought his own mental structure was faltering or that he was some kind of vengeful political feudist. Cavanaugh held MacVeagh back as the others filed out the door.

  “Jim,” he said, “if I were in your spot, there’s one line I think I’d follow up. Suppose your theory is correct? If it is, the President may have had symptoms before. After all, that’s why you looked up the material on his boyhood. Why not have some friend at the Pentagon look up Hollenbach’s service record for you? He fought in the Korean War. Army, wasn’t it? There might be something there, maybe not. But at any rate, if his mind was normal under pressure of combat, at least you’d feel a little easier.”

  MacVeagh thanked him and agreed to follow the suggestion. But he wondered if he really would. He felt disjointed, vapid, drained. God, he hoped he could sleep for a change tonight.

  The ride home with Rita began in sullen silence. The sky showed only patches of gray beyond the fringes of a muddy overcast that seemed to weigh on them like lead. They could hear gravel snapping under the tires as the rented sedan picked its way over the winding road to the highway. The village of Lusby was dark and only an occasional farmhouse light flickered as Jim pressed back to Washington at seventy miles an hour.

  “Jim,” said Rita, “I was never made to feel so shabby in my life.”

  “I’m sorry, Rita,” he apologized. “That’s all I can say. I’d have given ten thousand dollars to spare you that scene.”

  “That nasty Fred Odium,” she snapped. “I might have expected that from a man who’s pinched half the fannies on Capitol Hill.”

  “Rita. It’s over. Forget it.” He was bone weary and he did not want to talk about anything.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me why I was put through that crawly third degree…like some streetwalker the cops picked up?”

  “I can’t,” he said. “We were all sworn to secrecy. And if I could ask one thing more of you, please don’t mention anything about that meeting to anyone, Rita.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said bitterly. “How could I ever reveal such a dismal, degrading scene to anyone?”

  She turned to the window and once more Jim heard her sob. It was a brief, dry cry. Then she wiped her eyes under the dark glasses and smoked in silence as the night fled by.

  They were passing the entrance to Andrews Air Force Base when she suddenly said: “Jim, you are in some kind of cabal to destroy President Hollenbach, aren’t you?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m trying to help him, not hurt him. But I can’t talk about it, Rita. Not now.”

  She lit another cigarette after crumpling an old pack and reaching in her purse for a new one. “That’s it, isn’t it?” She was angry and accusing now. “He threw you off the ticket only three weeks after inviting you on it, so now you’re out to get even with him. You’re in some plot to discredit the President. I’ve a good mind to tell Joe Donovan tomorrow.”

  “Don’t, for God’s sake, Rita,” he implored. “That would raise all kinds of hell to no purpose. I’m not in any plot of any kind.”

  She said nothing.

  “Please, Rita,” he urged. “Trust me.”

  She turned, and her dark glasses faced him bleakly like lumps of coal. “Trust you, MacVeagh? After tonight? Never again.”

  And Jim realized there was no arguing with her. He felt sad, for her, for himself, for his country, and he wondered whether his fight was worth it. Perhaps he should drop the whole thing. Or, again, perhaps he was having hallucinations and had dreamed it all. He drove in silence through the deadened streets of Washington and when he reached the house on O Street, it was almost 2 A.M. Rita left the car without a good-by, banged the door, and rushed up the four brick steps to her front door.

  15.

  Green Turtle

  Ji
m arrived at the Senate Office Building Friday a few minutes before eight o’clock. The elevator boy yawned over a law textbook open on his knees. Otherwise the old structure was empty. Jim’s footsteps echoed in the wide marble corridor as though he were a platoon of wearily marching men.

  The first of Senator MacVeagh’s staff would not begin work until 8:30, and Jim was alone in his big room with its glass-windowed bookshelves, its autographed pictures, its photograph of spring plowing in Iowa, and its desk with the neat stacks of correspondence awaiting his attention.

  He felt wretched. The whites of his blue eyes were streaked with red, his head throbbed, and his skin felt as though it were flaking away, a sensation usually produced by lack of sleep. He had slept only fitfully, and no body position or mental counting game had carried him far from consciousness. Then, just after dawn, he had awakened from a light dozing spell to find his leg and arm muscles twitching.

  He had dreamed and the instant memory of it was vivid. He dreamed that President Mark Hollenbach, in a choking fury, had accused Jim of plotting his downfall. Jim, unable to contain his temper longer, lashed out savagely at Hollenbach with his fist, struck the President full on the cheekbone and felt, horribly, his hand go entirely through the President’s skull, emerging on the other side. When he pulled out his arm, as he would from a pail of water, Hollenbach fell dead at his feet. Then had come Arnold Brothers, shaking his head and clucking as though Jim had been a naughty child. Brothers snapped handcuffs on Jim and led him away to a barren cell in a damp prison where iron doors clanged ceaselessly. There Jim sat on a stool, desperately castigating himself for slaying a man without cause and wondering why he had not thought before he acted in violence.

  Now, in his Senate office, Jim could still feel the terror of the dream, even if he could no longer remember all the scenes. Was the dream some subtle warning from his subconscious? Was he guilty of trying to harm the President of the United States? Were his conclusions as to Mark’s sanity but flimsy conjectures that had no substance in fact? Were Nicholson, Odium and Gullion right in believing that Senator MacVeagh was imagining what was never there? Perhaps Martha, Griscom and Chief Brothers were correct, and his shocked mind was drifting from the mooring which had always held it so snugly.

  The man who once shied from self-analysis was now again deep in the process, and he wondered if some unknown, twisted part of him was luring him on a surrealist venture without earthly goals. Again he could feel the noose tightening about him, and he physically shook his shoulders to be free of it. No, he told himself firmly, nothing had changed. The man whose mind was shredding was not Jim MacVeagh, but Mark Hollenbach. Two stable men, Cavanaugh and O’Malley, gave credence to his story. Settle down, Jim, he cautioned himself. One step at a time. Don’t panic. All right, that’s better.

  When Jim later buzzed for Roger Carlson, the aide swung in with his cocky stride and was about to assume his customary slouching perch on the corner of Jim’s desk. Then he saw MacVeagh’s face and he stopped.

  “Jeez,” he said, “have you been doing the town all night? You look like something the rats left over.”

  Jim smiled wanly. “I stayed up too late, Flip, working on that Hollenbach book.”

  “You musta had a belt of Scotch with every paragraph,” said Carlson.

  “Nope, just the ravages of work. Flip, I want you to pull some strings over at the Pentagon and get me Hollenbach’s service record. I need it for the biography. Maybe, if it’s not too long, I could even use text on the thing.”

  Carlson folded his shirt-sleeved arms and shook his head.

  “Come off it, boss. You’re not writing any book about Mark Hollenbach. Something else is up. Right? Come on, tell me. What the hell is going on?”

  Jim was startled. “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said. You’re bluffing.”

  “I am not. I’m working on a lot of material about Hollenbach. What makes you doubt it?”

  Carlson pulled a chair to the center of the room and sat facing his senator. “Look, Jim, I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of screwy things are happening all at once. The way that FBI agent hinted around, I’m sure he was going to question me about you, not somebody else in the office. Then he calls it off, suddenly, just when you apparently called Hollenbach and bowed out of the vice-presidential thing. And how about that visit from the Secret Service agent after my La Belle trip? Some of the stuff he asked me was pretty far out, as though he had some zany idea that you and I were out to harm the President, for God’s sake. He got pretty detailed for the routine check he claimed it was. For instance, he asked me if I’d made a written report to you, and I said I had.”

  “Oh.” Jim couldn’t hide his surprise. God, he thought, he’d forgotten to cover that one.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Carlson.

  “Well, you see, that agent, Luther Smith, called on me too, and I told him you hadn’t made a written report, only a verbal one.”

  “But why did you say that?”

  “Because,” said Jim, “it was right in front of him. He was looking right at it and I was afraid he’d realize what it was and ask for it. Naturally, I didn’t want him to have it. Anyway, I guess now Smith probably has reported to Chief Brothers that I’m a liar, and they’ll think I’m the one who’s—” Jim checked himself. He averted his head and simulated a cough.

  “Who’s what?” asked Carlson.

  “Nothing, I mean…”

  “Say, boss,” persisted Carlson, “let’s level. Have you some kind of hunch that the President isn’t all there in the head?”

  “No, no, Flip. What gives you that idea?”

  “Well, as I say, a lot of stuff around here is beginning to add up. Take that report of mine. Mark Hollenbach was a pretty offbeat kid and college boy, wasn’t he? There were no kids like that on my block, or around the fraternity house either. Then these two investigations, and suddenly you get bounced off the ticket—or were going to be, according to you—only a few days after I got the clear idea that Hollenbach had picked you.”

  “I resigned,” said MacVeagh. “I took myself off.”

  “Yeah, I know. But all this studying of Hollenbach you’re doing, like you’re trying to psychoanalyze him. And now you want his service record.”

  “Flip,” said MacVeagh, with a show at firmness, “you’re imagining things. Your penchant for flashy speculation has got the best of you. I’m writing a biography of the President. It’s as simple as that.”

  “I don’t believe you. And if that’s cause for firing me, go ahead.”

  “Now, don’t get on the muscle.” Jim sought to placate him. “Just go ahead and get me that service record. The best way, probably, is through that Army legislative liaison officer, Colonel Josephs. He owes us plenty for all my votes for the Army. If he gives you any static, just remind him how much we’ve done for him in the past.”

  “All right.” Carlson got up to go, but his eyes held MacVeagh’s in a lingering and doubting gaze. “When you get ready to tell me, boss, I’ll be ready to listen. I might be able to help, you know.”

  And when Carlson closed the door behind him, Jim realized that one more friend had been added to the growing list of those who no longer believed what Senator MacVeagh told them. He felt helpless and isolated, and he realized that if he didn’t get some sleep soon he would become physically ill.

  By noontime, luckily, a great weariness settled over him. Jim welcomed the feeling of exhaustion, and he could visualize the sheets on his bed as a cool haven. He informed his staff he was going home and he quit for the day just as the noon bell rang for the Senate session.

  Martha met him at the door in McLean.

  “I’m whipped, Marty,” he said. “All done in, and I’m going to bed. No calls, please, huh?”

  “Is it this thing about the President that’s got you down?” she asked.
<
br />   “Uh-huh.” He did not have the energy to say more.

  She grasped him by both arms and smiled, her eyes roving fondly over his weary face.

  “Jim,” she said, “I’ve got it all figured out.”

  “You have?” He felt drugged and lifeless.

  “Yes, I have. We’re going away for a few days. Just the two of us, to that quiet little inn on Green Turtle Cay in the Bahamas. You know we love it there.”

  Yes, thought Jim. They had spent their fifth and tenth wedding anniversaries there. He could see the shifting pastels of the water, shimmering in the sun like a vast green mosaic, and he could feel the luxury of the lazy salted air. But he shook his head.

  “I can’t, Marty. Not now.”

  “Why not?” She squeezed his arms and implored with her eyes. “April is lovely in the outer islands. You can rest. We’ll watch the sunset and walk on the beach. You can fish, if you want. Please, Jim, please. You need it so, darling.”

  Well, he thought, why not? She believed that his mind was drifting, and perhaps it was. What could he do in Washington anyway right now? Nobody would listen to him. He was not convincing anybody, merely sowing a wider field of doubt whatever he did and wherever he went. But down there, in the soaking warmth and the silky nights, maybe he could think things out. Just maybe. Why, sure, Marty was right.

  “Okay, honey. You fix everything while I take a nap. Get us on a night jet to West Palm Beach and then we can fly over tomorrow morning.”

  She hugged him, planted a moist kiss on his ear, then tugged him toward the stairs.

  “While you’re asleep, the good fairy will wave her wand, and then we’ll be off,” she said.

  They flew south that night from Dulles International Airport after Martha had farmed out Chinky to friends and after Jim had called Flip Carlson, giving him the Bahamas address and leaving instructions that he was not to be disturbed for anything short of a declaration of war.