The Last President: A Novel of an Alternative America (12 page)

Uriah “Billy” Vandermeer inspected the front page of the
Washington Post
and slowly his thin lips arranged themselves in a tight, bloodless smile of satisfaction. “It’s pretty,” he said, “it’s very pretty.”

Charlie Ober nodded from where he stood, his ramrod-straight back to Vandermeer’s closed office door. “They bought it,” he said. “It took them three months, but they bought it.”

“‘Documents Link Kennedy to Diem Assassination’ right across the front page. Do they mention anywhere where they got the documents?”

“They’re, ah, reticent about that point,” Ober said. He looked out the window and saw the roses blooming in the White House formal garden. “What’s our move?”

“Sit down, Charlie, you make me nervous standing there like an usher. Our move? I suppose we must take some sort of official action. Against the
Post
. Against Coles. Of course we have to show that Coles is responsible first. Get the FBI in on that.” He tapped a pencil against the desk and stared across at the framed picture of himself and the President getting off a helicopter at Camp David.

Ober perched on a chair in front of the desk, even now retaining his military bearing but for the reflexive tapping of his foot. “I’ll call the Director, see that he’s pointed in the right direction. We don’t want to lose momentum on this.”

“Right. Hit the Democrats where it hurts—right in the Kennedy myth. We can keep this in the front pages until the election, and all the time we’re the good guys, trying to suppress government leaks. Put Coles in prison for a few years. Get the
Post
shut down, or hit them with a big fine, or something.”

Ober nodded. “We need a friendly judge on this one. I’ll speak to the boys in Justice, see who they advise. The right handling of this might put someone on the Supreme Court.”

Vandermeer put down the paper. “I saw the Old Man this morning,” he said. “We had breakfast. He passed the word to okay that operation of St. Yves. The toned-down version.”

“That code-word thing? Sibilant?”

“That’s it. I’ll never get used to these code words. But I suppose if we’re going to use CIA types, we have to put up with their little idiosyncrasies. Sibilant. Use the Hoover blackmail file, or what we have of it. But that hiring a yacht full of whores is out—too expensive. After all, this is a midterm election.”

“But it’s such a great image,” Ober said, chuckling. “Those fat asses humping in the air”—he pantomimed with his hands—“with our little cameras going behind the glass. And the little girlies with vacant smiles on their faces and wireless mikes in their pillows. Or, better yet, little boys.”

“You’ll have to live with just the image for a while,” Vandermeer said. “We’ve already got a few of our noble legislators pinned down.”

“Senator Slater, Senator Chaymber, Congressman Pliney, and Congressman Korr.”

“So far.”

“When do we put it to them—and how?”

“That’s up for discussion soon. The Old Man isn’t sure whether to use the material to recruit them or to eliminate them. Slater’s up for reelection, and Korr, of course, is too. Chaymber we could get recalled. With what we’ve got on him, we could get him lynched.”

“I think we should use them—if they’ll play.”

Vandermeer laughed. “Playing is what’s getting them in trouble.”

Kit sat on the edge of Aaron Adams’ pool and swished his long legs through the tepid water. “Twelve pages single-spaced,” he told Adams. “I stuck them in a March
Time
on your desk. The one with the drawing of an African nation emerging on the cover.”

Adams looked casually around to make sure none of his other guests was within earshot, then sat next to Kit on the cement. “Here,” he said, handing Kit a tall glass. “A Tom Collins for your troubles. Give me the highlights. Anything good?”

“Barry’s trial starts this week,” Kit said.

“Not news,” Adams said.

“You wonder how the FBI was able to track him down so fast when the
Post
refused to reveal their source?” Kit asked. “Ober told them who to look for.”

“Told them? By name?”

“That’s right. It was a setup. And I think those cables were phony.”

“So,” Adams said.

“A lot of trouble to go to just to get Barry Coles,” Kit said.

“Coles was secondary,” Adams said, “or even tertiary. The real objects were the
Post
and the Democrats and the Kennedy myth.”

Kit sipped at his drink, feeling the ice-cold booze wash down his throat. “Its incredible,” he said. “What’s going on in this government right now is—there’s no other word for it—incredible. On the surface, as far as the people can see, everything’s all right and business goes on as usual. The President goes to China. And we’ve all got to pull together now to end the dissension that’s polarizing the country. The great silent majority is behind the President, and only a few nuts are going around the country bombing things. On the surface.”

“That’s right,” Adams said. “On the surface this administration is no more troubled and no less responsible than any other.”

Kit put his drink down and tipped himself into the pool, sliding down feet first until he reached the bottom. The water was up to his chest. “You don’t suppose,” he said, turning back to where Adams squatted on the concrete, “that all other administrations were actually like this one, except we never found out about them? You don’t think that Roosevelt had his political enemies’ phones tapped, or that Wilson knocked off his opponents?”

Adams shook his head. “There’s one fundamental difference between this bunch of sweethearts and any previous administration. All the rest used public-relations techniques—to the extent that they used them at all—to put a good light on what they were doing. These people put up a public-relations front of what they should be doing—and it has no relation at all to what’s happening or what they really intend.”

“I still want out,” Kit said. “Someone in room sixteen murdered Dianna Holroyd, and I have no way of finding out for sure who it was, and no chance in hell of proving it.”

“What good will your quitting do,” Adams asked, “except to cut me off from the best source of information I have?”

“I notice you don’t say ‘only’,” Kit observed. “I hope you’re feeding this stuff to the Old Boy Network. If you’re a conduit to the Russians, or the French, or the Democrats, I’m going to be very disappointed.”

Adams sighed. “It’s a problem,” he said. “Your friend the President is getting a tight grip on CIA, and pretty soon we won’t know who to trust. It’s a very effective technique.”

“Well, at least he’s on his last term,” Kit said. “If we can keep him from doing too much damage for the next few years, maybe we can make some of the bastards accountable after the seventy-six election.” He pulled himself out of the water and grabbed for a towel.

“I thought you wanted out,” Adams said.

“More than anything in the world,” Kit said. “I want to wake up tomorrow morning and find that this has all been a dream. But, barring that, I want the man who got Dianna Holroyd to swing from the nearest oak.”

Adams nodded and appeared lost in thought for a minute. “We’d better work through a cutout from now on,” he said. “You can keep coming here as my guest, of course, but never speak privately to me after today. And don’t ever bring any documents, books, or papers in with you. It’s too dangerous.”

“Who are we going to use as a cutout?” Kit asked.

“Miriam.”

Kit froze for a second and then, realizing where he was, resumed rubbing himself with the broad red towel. “You’re crazy,” he said. “I won’t let her get involved in this.”

Adams stood and wrapped a towel around his neck. They walked back toward the house.

“I understand your feelings,” Adams said. “But consider what an egotistical ass you’ll sound like when you tell Miriam.”

“I don’t intend to tell her,” Kit said.

“Great,” Adams told him. “Then when St. Yves sends two thugs to her door she won’t even know why they’re there.”

“You son of a bitch!” Kit said. They walked into Adams’ den and Kit dropped onto the massive couch, feeling the leather upholstery stick to his damp skin. “But you’re right. Miriam is probably safer witting than unwitting. I’ll talk to her.”

“Not at your house,” Adams said, “or hers.”

“You know something?”

“I know how great minds think. We must treat these people very carefully. And remember that they are very dangerous.”

“They killed Dianna Holroyd,” Kit said. “There’s no way I’ll forget that.”

“That’s good,” Adams said. “But go beyond anger and let the memory make you very cautious. Very.”

“I’ll do my best,” Kit said.

Representative Clement W. Korr (D-Ohio) was a squat, dour, energetic man with a face like a petulant bulldog’s. Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and one of the five most powerful men in the House, he was running for his fifteenth consecutive term as the elected representative of the people of Ohio’s twenty-seventh congressional district. The Republicans, wasting neither time nor money in opposing him, were fielding a chiropractor with a seat on the local school board who saw Communists in the schools, in the churches, in the waterworks, and presumably under his bed. Korr was not worried.

Now, suddenly jerked out of the cocoon of prestige and power he had been thirty years weaving, Korr sat on a camp chair that was too small for his bottom and stared into the face of his doom. “Moving pictures?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Warren said, allowing a smile to briefly flicker over his composed features. “I have a hand viewer with me with a few feet of film on an endless loop. Would you like to view it, sir?”

Korr shifted his weight and the canvas and wood frame under him creaked alarmingly. He was sitting in front of a gaily colored tent, one of a row of similar tents along the edge of a meadow on the grounds of a state institution in Maryland. There was a medieval fair and tournament in progress on the meadow before him: three hundred or so people in costumes out of the King Arthur coloring book. At the entrance to the fair, Korr had been given a one-piece garment resembling a bath towel with a hole cut out for his head. His nemesis, who squatted on the ground facing him, was garbed in the rough olive robes of a mendicant monk. “Do I have a choice?” he asked. “Let’s see it.”

Warren produced a small plastic object shaped like a toy gun from under his robe. “Look into the muzzle,” he told Representative Korr, “and pull the trigger.”

Korr did so, hooking his thumb through a trigger guard obviously designed for hands somewhat smaller than his own. The gun muzzle flickered to life, and he was treated to a jerky, six-second loop of himself and Miss Tish Johnson, a secretary in his office, in an intimate embrace on the king-sized vibrator bed in room seven of the Kings Park Motel. The camera was somewhat behind and above the action, and it made him look frenetic, undignified, and ridiculous; but there was no question that it was, indeed, he.

Korr handed the viewer back to Warren. “How much?” he asked quietly.

“Oh, a couple of hours’ worth easy,” Warren said. Behind him two men in mock armor started bashing each other with mock swords.

Korr stood up. “You mistake me, sir,” he said. “Are you empowered to negotiate or must you consult with your principal? Tell him I will buy this material, but I must have the original and any copies that have been made. And I will not make the mistake of submitting to blackmail twice. The second time you come back, I call the police, regardless of the consequences to me.”

“It’s you who are mistaken,” Warren said.

“State your price,” Korr demanded, the muscles tightening around his jaw.

“The material is not for sale,” Warren said. “This is not a blackmail scheme. We’ll safeguard the material and, with your cooperation, nobody else will ever see it.”

“Cooperation?”

“I represent a political group,” Warren said. “We believe that the only hope for the salvation of this country is in the program of the President of the United States. We’d like to see you support that program.”

Korr sat down, his mouth open. “You must be kidding.”

“We’re very serious.”

“You expect me to start voting Republican? You think maybe nobody will notice?”

Warren shook his head. “No, of course not. No more than four or five times a year. We’ll call you, let you know.”

“I—”

”Otherwise we use these pictures and your opponent gets elected. He is, after all, a Republican.”

Korr stared at the two fighting knights without seeing them. “I was wondering,” he said. “All my liberal colleagues are getting smeared. They’re soft on communism, they’re against law and order, they have sexual designs on small children; charges springing out of the woodwork in well-organized smear campaigns. A lot of money is out there somewhere. But nothing on me. I wondered about that. Thought maybe I was too powerful for you. That was foolish wasn’t it? And all the time you had me with my pants down—as it were.”

“It’s your decision,” Warren said.

“Yes. Well, I’ll need some time to think about this.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow at two at your office,” Warren said, standing up. “If you’re not there, you can leave a message for me. Yes or no. No negotiating.”

“No one will ever see that film?” Korr said, trying to sound firm and not succeeding. “That’s understood. If I—no more than five times a year—if I—”

”That’s the deal,” Warren said. “You save your honor, your dignity, your office, and your marriage, and we get five votes a year for the President of the United States. It’s not as if we were asking you to do anything subversive, just support your President.” He turned and walked off across the field with the slow, measured steps appropriate to his costume.

“I’ll be damned!” Korr said. “I’ll be goddamned!” It was some minutes before he found the strength to push himself out of the chair and head down the hill toward the parking lot.

Malcolm Chaymber tossed his overnight bag on the floor and dropped into one of the chrome and canvas chairs that littered Sandy’s living loft. “Well, I’m here,” he said.

“Thank God you’ve come,” Sandy said, closing and double-locking the loft door behind him.

“When you called I had to assume it was important,” Chaymber said. “The fact that you know my real name and phone number came as quite a shock. I’ve felt guilty all these months, you understand, but it’s very hard to change a lie back into the truth, and the longer you wait the harder it gets. I won’t ask you now how you knew, since you should have known months ago if I’d had the courage to tell you. What do you need?”

“We’re still—friends?”

“Yes, Sandy, even without the dramatic pause we’re still friends. And I’m sure that you didn’t get me on an early-morning plane from Washington just to show me that you know. Did you?”

“No. Of course not. Oh, Richard—Oh, shit! Now I don’t even know what to call you. It isn’t Richard, it’s Malcolm. Do I call you Malcolm?”

“Usually it’s Mal.”

“I’ve known for some time, Mal. Since the first time, as a matter of fact. I’m nosy. I looked in your wallet. So I knew that you’re a United States senator. But I don’t give a damn what you call yourself. Why should I? You could have stayed Richard Hatch forever as far as I was concerned.”

“That’s very nice, Sandy,” Chaymber said dryly. “Now tell me what I’m doing here.”

“I had a phone call yesterday.”

“A phone call?”