Watergate (61 page)

It was 5:35 a.m., Hawaiian time, an hour after Nixon’s mawkish East Room farewell—that Roosevelt quotation!—with about thirty minutes to go before Ford’s swearing-in.

Richardson felt himself envying young Dick Darman, whom the hotel operator was trying to reach back in Washington. Dick had been with the Richardson family—indispensable, really—during their long just-concluded weeks of travel in the U.S.S.R. and Japan, but he’d gone straight home instead of on to Hawaii, where Richardson now found himself stuck, with Anne and the children, at this most inopportune time. The former attorney general didn’t see how he could endure another week of it before the family’s scheduled departure for San Francisco. He was supposed to address yet another ABA gathering in Honolulu on the fifteenth—but would he lose all chance of doing that as vice president designate by being trapped here in the meantime, so far from the decision-making in Washington? Rocky and Bush might both be at their summer places, but working the phones from Maine was a lot easier than working them from here.

At last, Darman.

“Dick,” he said, with relief.

“Wasn’t it
awful
?” Darman cackled. “ ‘When my heart’s dearest died.’
Christ!
”

Richardson muttered something about dissociative personalities, and after a bit more laughter Darman got down to business. “Some good news. I hear that George Will is preparing a column that will run tomorrow saying it should be Rocky or you.”

Prompted by a mental image of Will, Richardson began sketching an owl. The news wasn’t cheering him much. “Even Sandman appears to be for Nelson,” he said, gloomily. The New Jersey congressman, one of the Judiciary Committee’s most conservative members and the kind of Nixon Republican who’d loathed Rockefeller for years, now seemed to find him acceptable.

“Well,” said Darman, “Rocky looks a lot further to the right than he used to. With those drug laws up in New York, and the high body count at Attica.”

Richardson understood the assessment but thought it indelicate to comment on the political dividends of a prison massacre.

Darman’s own tone became a little gloomy. “What I hear from Woodward is not so good: Bob thinks Ford is pretty close to deciding on Bush.”

Richardson sighed. Despite the idyllic weather and fruit-flavored cocktails, his nerves were raw; his body didn’t know what time zone it was in.

Darman recommended patience. “The man who will be making this decision is extremely suggestible, not a leader. That’s why we need a steady drumbeat from surrogates making the case for you over the next several days. In Jerry Ford we’re dealing with a modest man who doesn’t think for himself.”

Trying to look on the bright side, Richardson murmured something like agreement. “As I’ve told you before, Richard, we all have the corresponding defects of our qualities.”

“Maybe even you, sir!” Darman’s pleasure in being called “Richard,” something the boss did at his most fatherly and mentoring moments, was audible to Richardson even from five thousand miles away.

“So,” he asked, “do I come home?”

“No,” answered Darman. “Don’t look overeager. No announcement is expected for at least ten days. And Bill Rogers agrees with what I’ve just laid out. That surrogates’ drumbeat should reach a crescendo just as you arrive home
on schedule
.”

Richardson, who’d hoped for a different answer, shifted the subject. “I’ve got interview requests in front of me from the
Boston Herald
, the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
, and one of the local television stations. Do I do them?”

“Yes,” said Darman. “They won’t be picked up here.”

Richardson silently wondered what then was the point.

“Sir,” said Darman, “I’ll make my calls and you make yours. Let’s continue down the lists we drew up yesterday, and I’ll check in with you again tonight at six o’clock my time.”

“Okay, Dick.”

Richardson looked at the column of names he’d created in his odd, swirling penmanship, whose little dots and horizontal scimitars looked more like Arabic than English. He considered the first several names:

The very first one depressed him. Instinct convinced him that the navy secretary would soon be coming out for Bush, if he hadn’t already. Was there really a point to calling him? Certainly not at the moment, when like everyone else Chafee would be watching Ford’s swearing-in—or attending it in person!

Richardson went back to his doodling, stealing an occasional glance at a second list, the one he’d made of his rivals’ liabilities:

Alas, his own liabilities would now be getting talked about: his supposed lack of warmth; his ironically too-close association with Watergate. Never mind that he had been on the right side of that; Ford no doubt wanted to get away from the whole thing.

Well, the only way to do that would be to pardon Nixon. Otherwise the country would remain obsessed by a former president’s efforts to stay out of jail. But once made—Richardson did the calculus—a pardon would be greeted with such outrage that Ford would need Elliot Richardson … 
for
his association with Watergate, his record of cleanliness amidst all that chicanery.

Timing was everything here.
Recommend Pardon
, he now wrote on his pad. He must talk that up with whomever he discussed the miserable but necessary office he was seeking. Urge that the pardon be given
now
, before the choosing of the veep.
If it were done when ’tis done
,
then ’twere well it were done quickly
. Make clear that it will only be harder to do it later, and hammer home the point that the administration will otherwise never get off the ground. Even at this moment, with the new president about to take the oath, the television was mentioning Nixon’s name two or three times more often than Ford’s.

Bill Ruckelshaus, Richardson’s fellow martyr of the Saturday Night Massacre, had advised him to call Ford even before Nixon resigned, so he’d done that yesterday. It was understandable, given all the commotion and the time difference, that the call had yet to be returned, but having to wait for a response was fraying Richardson’s nerves ever further. He also had a call in to Kissinger. Henry would probably prefer as VP an old patron (Rocky) to an old semi-protégé (they’d gotten chummy when both attended NSC meetings during the administration’s early days); but Henry might, if Rocky faded, go for Richardson over Bush.

It all made Richardson’s head swim, and the sight of the call sheet was enough to induce indigestion. The sort of pleading it represented was worse than asking for campaign contributions, one of the repellent chores that had long ago made him give up elective life for the appointive kind.

Richardson turned off the television; there was nothing to be gained from any attempt to read Gerald Ford’s blank face. He went back to his Laysan duck, but the phone rang almost as soon as he picked up the brush.

“I have the White House on the line,” said the hotel operator.

“Thank you,” said Richardson.

“Good morning, Elliot. Did I wake you?”

To Richardson’s distress, his call was being returned by Al Haig, who he’d hoped had flown off into exile with Nixon. But, of course, good old suggestible Jerry had decided that Haig should stay on for a bit as chief of staff.

“Not at all,” answered Richardson. “I was just watching a replay of the president’s farewell. I’ve rarely been so moved.”

“Really.”

“Oh, yes,” said Richardson, wondering how he and Darman were going to get past this enormous, unexpected stumbling block. Would Haig be around for another week? Through the whole VP selection?

“Well,” said the general, “I’ve got to get into the East Room, but I saw that you’d called and just wanted to let you know that your name is certainly being very much mentioned around here.”

“Is it? That’s very flattering, Al.”

“Yes, for ambassador to England. We’ll be in touch.”

Haig hung up the phone. Richardson looked out the window, regarding the sun on the coconuts, marooned in the paradise of his reputation.

“The flight plan says we’ll be passing over Liberal, Kansas,” Frank Gannon informed Diane Sawyer. “Should we waggle our wings?”

“We’re also supposed to go over Gallup, New Mexico,” she pointed out. “What do we do there? ‘Experience a sudden loss of altitude’?”

As Air Force One flew west, the two weary young staffers kept up the gallows humor, no matter that the trapdoor had already dropped. It was the same with the president, who had come aboard shockingly tired but managed to observe that the back of the cabin “smelled a lot better than usual,” now that it was free of the press. Ziegler had succeeded in keeping them off this final flight from Washington to San Clemente.

Only thirty-four passengers were traveling, and most of them remembered to look at their watches as twelve noon EDT arrived and, somewhere over Jefferson City, Missouri, Nixon ceased to be president. All chatter stopped for a long moment. “Air Force Once,” someone finally muttered. No one had the heart to be wearing the flight jackets they used to don as status symbols. Nixon himself was in a sport coat, inside his cabin, taking the first sip of a martini with Ziegler.

The stewards began serving shrimp cocktail and prime rib a little ahead of schedule. Some people couldn’t summon the energy, or stomach, for more than a couple of bites. In Haldeman’s day, the plane’s mood had been especially severe, but it hadn’t lightened all that much with his departure. The blue-gray decor of the new aircraft, which became available after the ’72 election, suggested a submarine traveling at a low, serious depth. One almost expected to hear the pinging of sonar.

When Ziegler emerged from the president’s cabin, Steve Bull read his anxious expression, and asked, “
Another
call?”

The press secretary shook his head, knowing that Bull referred to Haldeman’s continual pleas for a last-minute double pardon of the Watergate conspirators and Vietnam draft evaders. “No,” he said, “I’ve got to talk to you about El Toro.” A large crowd was apparently forming at the marine air base where they’d be landing. It was friendly, to be sure, but so big that the now former president might feel required to address it. “And I’m a little worried about
her
,” said Ziegler, pointing to the first lady’s small, private cabin.

Inside it, Pat sat behind a little writing table, knowing that Dick was on the other side of the thin wall. She wanted to lie down on the narrow bed but had decided she should use the time to write some thank-you notes. And yet, when she saw the two stacks of available stationery, she didn’t have the heart to use either. One sported a letterhead saying “The White House,” where they no longer lived, and the other was embossed with the words “Air Force One,” which this plane hadn’t been for twenty minutes. She decided she had her excuse not to work. She swept both piles of stationery into the trash basket—as wasteful a gesture as she’d allowed herself in the last five years—leaving only her untouched lunch and a pack of cigarettes on the desk.

Closing her eyes, she thought again of what she’d seen on the South Lawn after boarding the helicopter: three soldiers rolling up the red carpet and hanging on to their dress caps against the chop of the rotors. It looked as if they were wrapping up a corpse. She’d heard herself say, “It’s so sad, it’s so sad,” as the helicopter rose above the Ellipse, and she had scarcely said a word since. She’d spent the whole flight in this tiny cabin.

It was comfortable enough, but she preferred the old plane, even with its assassination taint. It had had bright desert colors, and every time she stepped onto it she would remember the day in ’68, just after the election, when they’d come aboard and Dick had twirled her in his arms, thinking no one was looking.

She regarded the blank, greenish screen of the little Sony TV in here and experienced a curious moment of joy, thinking that her own face might never again appear on any television, anywhere. She tried to prolong the thought, to comfort herself with it, but there was one more thing she had to do before she could even pretend to relax.

She opened the door and stuck her head into the aisle, catching the eye of Colonel Brennan, who came forward immediately.

“I’d like to place a call,” she said, handing him a slip of paper with the number.

“Right away, ma’am.”

She closed the door, sat back down, and waited for the phone to ring. Once she picked it up, she realized that the signal was terrible; the roar of white noise sounded like the crowds in Cairo.

“What?”
she asked, louder than she liked. “What did you say?” She’d only caught a word or two.

Then Tom Garahan’s voice again broke through, a little more clearly this time: “I said you’re heading in the wrong direction!”

“Oh!” she cried, hoping he would hear her laugh. “For a long time now!”

“What?”

“—long time now—”

And then, suddenly, the signal cleared, as if the static had been turbulence and the pilot had just found a calm airstream.

“They’re waiting for you,” said Tom, sounding almost as if he were in the cabin.

“Who?” she asked.

“The crowd where you’re going to land. There are thousands of them there already, singing ‘God Bless America.’ ”

She took a cigarette from the pack. She could feel the tears and nausea coming. She could
not
do it, not after this morning’s televised torture in the East Room. And not after this, which was killing her all over again.

“The screen keeps shifting back and forth between there and Washington,” Tom explained.

“Turn it off, please.”

She could hear the click, after he got up from the couch in the Madison Avenue apartment.

“I sent you something,” she said, when Tom returned to the line.

“I already got it, this morning.”

She’d written him Tuesday night, after Rose had told her there was no turning back.