Watergate (43 page)

Hunt took another set of stapled papers from the folder, a draft of the motion to vacate his conviction.

“Please,” said Clarine. “Go ahead.”

He scanned it and selected the crux of his argument:
“Whether or not the evidence
,
unexposed because of now notorious corruption by government officials
,
would have established the defendant’s innocence
,
such misconduct so gravely violated his constitutional rights as to require dismissal of the proceedings.”

Clarine nodded. To make sure she understood, Hunt offered some extemporaneous explanation: “They burned the notebooks I kept in my White House safe. John Dean let the acting head of the FBI do it.”

Clarine again nodded, wondering if the MOOT envelope had gone up in the same blaze.

“A thirty-five-year sentence for abetting a burglary,” Hunt intoned, with the Ancient Mariner’s practiced repetition. “Given to a man with no prior criminal record.”

“How do you pass your time?” Clarine asked. “Aside from working on your statements.”

“Here I more or less just go to court. In Danbury I’m one of the prison librarians.”

Clarine wondered if LaRue’s poor vision would doom him to manual labor once
he
went away. If so, maybe he could help to maintain the tennis courts she’d heard Danbury had. He might like that; Fred played a surprisingly aggressive game, tracking the ball with an animal instinct beyond the weak powers of his eyes and ears. Her curiously durable feeling for him now made her get down to business with Hunt. She removed her lime-green jacket with its three-quarter-length sleeves, revealing Dorothy Hunt’s jade brooch clipped to her white blouse. She noted Hunt’s immediate recognition of it.

“You’re not a writer,” he said, with equal flashes of anger and confusion. But he was too intrigued to alarm the guard by raising his voice.

Clarine repressed a sarcastic urge to say “Neither are you.” She silently removed the pin and passed it across the table. The guard remained engrossed in his magazine.

“I don’t understand,” said Hunt. “Who gave you this? Somebody in the Chicago morgue?”

“I’ve never been to Chicago in my life,” replied Clarine, who had decided it made sense to cultivate an air of maximum mystery.

“Why are you giving this to me?” asked Hunt.

“Because I want something in return.” She paused. “Did you ever possess an envelope with the word ‘MOOT’ written across it?”

Hunt peered at Clarine, trying to figure out who might have sent her here. Not Justice or the White House—neither would dare—but the Agency? For reasons swathed in a dozen different layers of camouflage?
A decided possibility. But could she also be some mysterious friend of his wife’s, one of several he suspected Dorothy had made, during those six months of stress, without telling him?

Clarine could tell from the look in Hunt’s eyes that the MOOT envelope had not gone up in smoke with his notebooks, that it still existed. She decided to challenge him directly: “Wherever you put that envelope, it’s still there, isn’t it?”

“Suppose I could get it for you,” said Hunt. “Why give me the pin now, instead of after I’ve delivered?”

“The pin is lovely, but it’s not very expensive, or important. You’re not going to do anything for me because of it.”

“So then why
would
I? Do anything for you, that is.”

Clarine made an effort to sound like a character in
The Berlin Ending
. “Don’t think about this little jade pin,” she said. “Think of the Rosetta Stone.” However preposterous, she wanted him to believe that’s what
she
was.

And he was regarding her—this sudden apparition, beautiful and duplicitous—as if she might indeed, somehow, be what would deliver him from the whole fifteen-month nightmare of shame, embarrassment, and death. Could she be the person able to demonstrate that no one—from Richard Nixon to the special prosecutor to himself—had ever known what this affair was
really
about?

“I think I know where to find what you want,” he said at last.

“Good,” said Clarine. “Think about it.”

Eager not to overplay her hand, hoping to retain her aura, she got up and put her jacket on, then signaled to the drowsy guard that she was ready to be let out.

“How can I contact you?” asked Hunt.

“You have an address and phone number. Use one of them when you figure out how to get the envelope.”

She saw him look at her with a reasonable certainty that she had nothing to do with the authorities currently oppressing him. In return, she knew that he would not talk, that he was seeing fine possibilities in her that must not be put at risk.

Once she was in the car, LaRue, who had imagined her running a gauntlet of thugs, asked, “Wolf whistles?”

“Not a one. Not even from him.”

“Really? Even when he must have realized that the picture you sent doesn’t do you justice?”

“He doesn’t have the strength to whistle,” Clarine explained, with unexpected sadness.

Kissinger had at last become secretary of state, and Rose had a new title, too—Executive Assistant to the President. She was thoroughly indifferent to it. “Personal secretary” had been fine, and this new moniker wasn’t saving her from some of the worst scut work she’d ever been asked to perform. Here it was, past five o’clock on a Sunday, and here
she
was, amidst the mosquitoes of Camp David, a place she couldn’t stand, trying to transcribe eight of the “White House tapes” so that their side would know exactly what it was arguing about with Sirica.

She had been at it for two days on a Sony 800B with no pedal. She’d yet to complete a single reel and she had a splitting headache. Three aspirin hadn’t killed it, and she didn’t think she could wait another fifteen minutes for cocktails. She had the TV on in the background, and the one station they got up here in Hooterville was broadcasting some week-in-review program. Agnew, filmed yesterday out in Los Angeles, was bellowing to a Republican women’s luncheon—
“I will not resign if indicted! I will not resign if indicted!”
—and by the time he finished, some of the gals were standing on the tables, roaring approval and waving napkins.

Agnew was sleek as a seal in a circus, comfortable in his body and expensive suit, and always beautifully groomed. From the moment Rose first saw him in ’68, she’d spotted him for an excellent dancer, and she’d not been disappointed the couple of times they’d been out on the floor together. She remained sympathetic to this bluff, manly character, even if he’d turned out to be a little crooked. Right now he was being killed, deliberately, by leaks from Richardson and all the career Democrats at Justice, and even if she didn’t rise to her feet here inside Dogwood Cottage, Rose liked the sound of him fighting back.

Howard Hunt, whose testimony the TV was now showing, did nothing
for her: a real oddball, like some disappointed professor or severe, scholarly priest. Liddy was supposed to be even stranger, but
he
still refused to testify, period, and that, in Rose’s book, made him the most stand-up guy of all.

God, these tapes. The other day, when the boss approached her with the project, he’d made it sound like a piece of cake. “Rose, you’re such a fast typist. I’ll bet you have all eight of them done before we head back to Washington Monday morning.” Fat chance! It was
agony:
listening to a few inches at a time; pressing the
PAUSE
button; each squeaky rewinding like a dentist’s drill. She had to strain to make out one voice from another when everybody talked at once, and it was impossible to hear anybody’s words over the rattle of coffee cups, the tapping of pencils, or an airplane passing overhead. The whole thing made her despair. And having to do it here only made it worse. She’d give anything to be home inside the cozy hive of Watergate West, ready to spend Sunday night by herself.

“How’s it coming?” asked Richard Nixon.

“Jesus, you scared me,” said Rose, before laughing.

The president had just come back from the pool. He was wearing a short-sleeved madras shirt above his still-wet swim trunks. Tufts of chest hair, more black than gray, sprouted from his open collar, showing off a virility he usually took pains to hide. Rose had always thought his visits to the barber bordered on the compulsive; he’d been afraid of his own five o’clock shadow long before people said it had cost him the debates with Kennedy.

“Sorry,” said Nixon. “And sorry this is turning out to be such awful work.” He put a towel over one of the chair cushions and sat down.

She smiled. “You’re always talking about ‘three yards and a cloud of dust.’ Well, this is six inches of tape and a bunch of static.”

“You mind?” asked the president, putting his finger on the
PLAY
button.

“Be my guest.”

A cacophony of cross talk emerged from the speaker. After about twenty seconds Nixon shut it off.

“Three voices?” he asked.

“Yes,” answered Rose. “You, Bob, and John. As soon as I’m sure John
has left the room, I can stop transcribing this one. Al called back a couple of hours ago, after double-checking: the subpoena only calls for the part of this conversation that’s between you and John.”

Nixon nodded. “When is this one from?”

“Three days after the break-in. Just before lunch on a Tuesday.” She pressed the button to play a little more.

“Who just whistled?” asked the president.

“I haven’t a clue.”

But both could now hear Nixon mentioning Ely, Nevada, the first lady’s birthplace. He was responding to Haldeman, who’d just brought up a campaign trip Pat had finished making to South Dakota. Nixon was noting that her parents had been married in that state before moving to Ely.

He pressed the
STOP
button. “Take a break. Let’s go have a drink and dinner.”

“No arguments from me,” said Rose.

Everyone at the table was so sympathetic to her ordeal that they practically sang “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” But what really cheered her up, along with a third glass of Riesling, was a change in plans: they’d be going back to Washington late tonight instead of early tomorrow morning. The helicopter would leave around nine-thirty, after a movie. Refreshed by the prospect of sleeping in her own bed, she decided to go back to work and complete at least this first bear of a tape while the rest of them watched the film.

She took her coffee back to Dogwood, switched on the IBM Selectric, and hit
PLAY
on the Sony. She somehow hoped to
hear
Ehrlichman’s absence, if not his actual exit, but it was like proving a negative. Was he still there while HRH and the president remarked on how the EOB ought to be checked for
Democrat
bugs? Or when they expressed disbelief that anybody could equate this bit of campaign hijinx with the leaking of the Pentagon Papers? As she listened to this portion of the conversation, she actually hoped Ehrlichman
was
still in the room: what was being said, if under subpoena, could actually help. The boss and Haldeman sounded surprised about the burglary, and their remarks showed a sense of proportion that the other side had long since lost.

Even so, Rose did not enjoy having to hear HRH’s voice for the first time in months. She’d not even watched his Ervin testimony, and as she listened to more of this tape—not transcribing now, just searching for a hint of Ehrlichman’s whereabouts—it was to Richard Nixon’s voice that she more naturally inclined:

The boss clearly didn’t want to pursue the subject:

HRH, who didn’t smoke, drink, go to doctors, or watch much TV, didn’t seem to get the reference to the advertising catchphrase. The boss let it pass:

Rose, too, remembered every day of ’62’s horrible grind, right through the “last press conference.”

He laughed at the antiquity of these celluloid names, but Haldeman still said nothing, as if not wanting to revisit ten-year-old emotions he probably hadn’t felt in the first place. Nixon was left to monologize: