Watergate (31 page)

Only this morning, but once and for all, Haldeman and Ehrlichman had decided that Mitchell had to take the rap—had to step forward and claim responsibility for everything that had happened, so that it could all disappear in the orgy of self-congratulation the press would throw themselves for having caught such a big fish.

But when Ehrlichman put the proposition to Mitchell, the answer was a polite, emphatic no. However depressed and seedy he’d gotten, he wasn’t going to be bamboozled. He didn’t come down from New York, on the shuttle, until after lunch, and he’d probably gotten home to Martha, as she knew he would, before dinnertime.

This may have been everyone’s last chance, and it was gone.

The president resumed speaking to his wife when the limousine turned into the driveway of the Hilton. “I let Ehrlichman talk to him. Not very successfully.”

“Did you consider seeing him yourself?”

“I couldn’t do it. And besides—”

The rest of his sentence disappeared in a burst of flashbulbs.

The hotel’s International Ballroom was a vast underground and airless modern space; it gave Nixon the feeling that he was in steerage on some giant spaceship. A small band played “Hail to the Chief” as he and Pat made their way down a head table many times longer than the one for the Last Supper. He said hello to Rogers and Richardson and to Cap Weinberger, the Reagan man they now had at HEW.

Ted Knap, the fellow from Scripps Howard about to become the association’s president, welcomed the first couple with a please-dig-in gesture toward the dessert now being served. At the direction of the White House, a bowl of consommé, rather than strawberry shortcake, had been set in front of Nixon, who believed
he
never got credit for remaining trim in a town where half the men, by the time they turned forty, were shaped like bowling pins; Ehrlichman was a good example.
No, Pat was just “skinny,” and he himself got mocked for eating cottage cheese with ketchup.

Sweets had ruined his teeth, not his torso. Today had started with yet another visit to Dr. Chase on Eighteenth Street, to deal with some rot underneath a lower-right crown. He and the dentist both put the blame on his three years’ worth of nickel breakfasts while at Duke: a Milky Way bar, economical and energizing, every morning he awoke inside Whippoorwill Manor, the off-campus dump he’d shared with a bunch of other law students.

Did he need a criminal lawyer now? Someone other than Dean, who these last three weeks had felt less like his counsel than a mole? Sure as shooting, he would follow Magruder to the prosecutors and make a deal, if he hadn’t already.

The president looked at the three
Washington Post
tables just below the dais—a whole little government-in-exile presided over by Bradlee, Jack Kennedy’s fellow cocksman; the two of them had fornicated their way into middle age like Harvard boys still panting outside the burlesque stage door in Boston.

He also caught sight of Mrs. Longworth, sitting with her cousin Alsop at a table slightly farther back. He rose from his chair and made a courtly bow, remembering all of a sudden her Christmastime warnings about Hunt. He realized he’d never followed up on them, but how, in any case, would that have been possible? And what damage could Hunt have done by forgery, beyond what he’d accomplished with plain and simple blackmail?

“They’ll be ready for you in about five minutes,” said Ziegler.

Nixon nodded. “Did Mitchell’s little trip down here make it onto the wires?”

Ziegler laughed. “I heard he wound up sitting next to Daniel Schorr on the shuttle back to New York. Needless to say, he didn’t reveal anything.”

“Old Stone Face,” said Nixon, alarmed by the surge of affection that speaking Mitchell’s nickname brought. But, goddammit, how could John have let the bugging idea continue beyond that preposterous meeting in the DOJ? It was goddamn Martha’s fault, driving the man further toward distraction every year. He thanked God for Pat, who was
graciously nodding to some butch gal from the Philadelphia
Bulletin
as she took another tiny forkful of cake.

“You know,” he said, leaning toward her on his right, “it wouldn’t have done any good anyway. Mitchell taking the blame, I mean.”

“Why?” she asked, not even needing to whisper in the ballroom’s din.

Nixon sighed. “Connally says, if people are told Mitchell knew, then they’ll believe Nixon knew. Because the two of them are too close for it to have been otherwise.”

“And it will be the same with Haldeman, Dick. His going won’t satisfy these people either. They’re coming for
you
.”

She might have said
us
, to make him feel less alone, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Besides, the starker the message the better.

Ted Knap began his introduction of the president. Nixon, pushing away his bowl of soup, spoke softly to Ziegler. “I’m thinking about a Warren Commission kind of thing. Put both Ervin and Sirica on it. Let them compete to see who can leak the most and get the biggest fawning headlines.”

“An interesting thought,” Ziegler whispered, hoarsely.

“Liddy is the key to this, you know. If I could be seen pressuring him, maybe even going to the D.C. jail, telling him to
talk
—well, then it would be the
president
cracking the case.”

Hiss was on the boss’s mind yet again, thought Ziegler, who prayed for Knap to finish. He realized that a visit to the District of Columbia Jail was no more beyond possibility than 1970’s middle-of-the-night trip to the Lincoln Memorial.

To the press secretary’s relief, Knap picked up a sterling-silver globe, a copy of one made in eighteenth-century Williamsburg, and prepared to bestow it upon the president in recognition of the past year’s foreign-policy triumphs. The object, held aloft, received polite applause, which diminished to something even milder when Nixon rose to accept it.

“I can’t give up Haldeman,” the president whispered to Pat before walking to the lectern. “He’s the only one who can handle Kissinger.”

The first lady shook her head, imperceptibly, masking her disbelief while she applauded her husband and smiled toward the fifth and sixth rows of tables.

As he took possession of the globe and posed for pictures with Knap,
Nixon felt his anger rise against the sick, disproportionate thinking of the crowd that was giving him this gift. The actual globe could fall apart at any time, but moments ago this throng in front of him had no doubt whistled and hollered for the
Post
boys, all for saving the world from what was—truthfully—a third-rate burglary.

“President Knap, distinguished guests, and friends: It is a privilege to be here at the White House Correspondents’ dinner. I suppose I should say it is an
executive
privilege.”

Now that he had the bastards laughing, he would snooker them with a little solemnity: “In the past several months, two men who appeared at these annual dinners on a total of twelve separate occasions have passed away, and President Knap, with your permission I think it would be appropriate this evening for everyone to rise in a moment of silence in memory of Presidents Harry S. Truman and Lyndon Baines Johnson.”

As everyone stood, he stole a glance at Pat, knowing he hadn’t gotten through to her with what he’d said about Haldeman.

But it was time to get back to being a good sport. He offered the reseated crowd a little tribute to Ziegler’s patience and loyalty, setting up a joke that Buchanan had written. “I must say that you’ve really worked him over, ladies and gentlemen. This morning he came into the office a little early, and I said, ‘What time is it, Ron?’ And he said, ‘Could I put that on background?’ ”

Time to steer things back to seriousness, to the big themes of “a lasting peace abroad and prosperity at home,” phrasing he could by now roll out with the rote ease of “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

He kept things short, got them to stand and clap for the four returned POWs in the ballroom, and ended by flattering them with what they’d believe to be a quotation from one of their own: “Now that the burden of our nation’s longest war has at long last been lifted, I am coming to realize the truth of what David Lawrence, a charter member of this group fifty-nine years ago, said to me not long before his recent passing: “ ‘There is only one more difficult task than being president of this country when we are waging war, and that is to be president of the nation when it is waging peace.’ ”

Stepping away from the lectern, he found himself smiling, genuinely amused to have put them into the position of not knowing whether they
were applauding him or Lawrence; as a result, they couldn’t decide how far up to set the thermostat of their approval. Christ, he’d have to see half of them again tomorrow morning, the ones who were here from out of town, when they sat their fat asses down in the East Room for the worship service. What ever possessed Ziegler to think
that
invitation would be helpful?

“First-rate, perfect,” said Richardson, as the president returned to his seat on the dais.

Puffect
, he pronounced it, irritating Nixon.

“Did you like the Lawrence quotation?” the president asked his new defense secretary.

“It hit exactly the right note,” answered Richardson.

“I made it up.”

Nixon took his wife’s hand, and the crowd stood up as the two of them got ready to depart. He said good night to Rogers, who told the president about a cheap shot the emcee had taken against Agnew, before adding one of his own, calling the vice president “your insurance policy.”

“Well, that policy may have to be canceled,” Nixon responded. “Haldeman’s found out that our friend from Maryland has a few problems of his own that are being investigated.”

Rogers looked puzzled.

“Not Watergate,” said Nixon. “Something else entirely.” He rubbed his thumb against his index and middle fingers to indicate money.

Rogers’s mouth opened slightly as he relinquished the president, who snapped off a salute to the POWs.

The tablecloths looked like hundreds of whitecaps, but Nixon forced himself to step down into the sea of guests, far enough to kiss Mrs. L’s hand and shake Joe Alsop’s. He gave the writer’s elbow a small appreciative squeeze, thanks for his not having sat at one of the
Post
tables, even though Mrs. Graham’s paper remained the flagship purveyor of his column. Nixon felt particularly grateful for Alsop’s having recently written that the media should think twice about turning Richard Nixon, the only president they had, into a cripple on the world’s dangerous stage.

“How’s Stew?” Nixon asked the columnist.

“He’s got his ups and downs, Mr. President. He was at the Gridiron
last month and feeling just fine. But he wasn’t strong enough to come out tonight.”

“Just like Harold,” said Nixon, baffling Alsop with this reference to his own brother’s long illness. “It went on for ten years.”

Alice Longworth, accepting a peck on the cheek from the first lady, experienced her own moment of confusion. It was Joe’s mention of the Gridiron dinner—weren’t they there
now
? But if they were, where was the Marine Band? And where were the white ties?

She emerged from the daze within seconds, realizing with her usual detachment that some piece of arterial plaque must have clogged things in her noggin before getting flushed out of the way. She was perfectly lucid once more: she was at the
other
dinner, the one for the correspondents’ association, and there was Dick, receding toward the exit with his hand nowhere near the small of his wife’s back, as it ought to be.

She noted Pat’s exceptional thinness, though she herself had weighed only ninety-two and one-half pounds the last time she’d been forced onto a scale. She might be making it to ninety-three tonight, if they’d served her one of Anna Maria’s veal chops instead of this chicken that had choked to death on its own paprika.

“He’s got to give another Checkers speech,” said Joe, watching the president disappear.

“What’s he going to say?” asked Alice. “That he’s keeping Haldeman the way he allowed the girls to keep the dog?”

Elliot Richardson, having greeted the
Boston Globe
table, now approached Alsop and said hello. Alice listened with exasperation to their brief, maloccluded exchange, wondering why so many people in her own dying social class continued to speak in that maddening double-slur of alcohol and lockjaw.

“Mrs. Longworth,” said Richardson, reluctantly. “How lovely to see you. So much has happened since Miami.”

“I have never been to Miami,” she said, provoking his retreat.

She sat down, and tugged on her cousin’s jacket to make him sit with her. “Joe, you need to update your advice.”

“What advice do you mean?”

“The advice you gave in that column supporting Dick, the one putting political hijinx like Watergate into
perspective
.”

“You make perspective sound like spinach.”

“You referred to that forged letter from the British ambassador during the campaign of 1888. Cleveland and Harrison. Whom do you think you’re writing for?
Me?
”

“I thought you didn’t read the
Post
.”

“I don’t. My granddaughter does.”

“And her copy fell open on your breakfast tray.”

“I don’t eat breakfast. No, Joanna read me that column, and your conclusion was wrong, wrong, wrong.”

“How so?”

“You say the press are trying to cripple Dick.”

“And so they are.”

“They are not,” Alice said firmly, as the vast room around them began to empty itself. “They are trying to kill him.”