William F. Buckley Jr. (23 page)

He went on to read the feature profile on Mr. Barghoorn, written by his sometime colleague in Saigon, David Abshire.
Barghoorn, the report read, had made six trips to the Soviet Union since the war. He had “always been very careful, while in the U.S.S.R., to avoid any actions that could be construed as espionage, even refraining from carrying a camera or engaging in overlong conversation with Soviet citizens.” The purpose of his recent visit was “to gather evidence for a book … on the Soviet political system … and on political instruction and indoctrination.” Henry’s smile broadened as he read that Barghoorn “had informed Soviet authorities of this before his trip.” He wondered whether old Fred had stipulated the maximum length of any conversation he would have while in Moscow.

He put down his cup to turn the page, and learned that the Institute of Strategic Studies estimated that the NATO countries had outpaced the Soviet bloc by five to one in numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Skipping about, he noted that Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas had married again, as had Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot shot down by the Soviet military—Henry had covered his release, in Berlin, with Powers set free in exchange for the U.S. release of Soviet superspy Rudolf Abel.

He wandered around the PX, and suddenly it occurred to him that he hadn’t bought a gift for Caroline or for the children. He looked about at the heavy-laden shelves. Booze was manifestly a big favorite of military clientele and occupied row after row of shelf space. Conventional fifths of liquor sold either for a few cents less than one dollar (Old Crow), or a few cents more (Jack Daniels). His eye caught the bottle of cognac selling for forty dollars.
Forty dollars in a PX?
Was it taken from Napoleon’s private collection? He brought it down from the shelf and turned it around in his hand. What-the-hell—he plucked it down in the trolley he was dragging along. For the children he purchased games—Parcheesi, dominoes, Monopoly for Emily (she probably had two sets). He thought to telephone Caroline, but after looking at his watch decided against a call that would ring in Greenwich at close to midnight. He could call from Honolulu.

Or he could wait until getting to New York.

He sat down in the lounge. He knew that he needed to question
himself. What was going on? How was it that he was finding reasons to postpone calling Caroline?
Caroline.
He opened his large briefcase, reached into the farthest compartment, took out the manila folder with her letters and pulled out the one that had arrived only a few days ago. It was her P.S. that roiled in the memory. He read it again. “You ask how is it with Danny. Dear Danny, he has very heavy responsibilities and is away a great deal. I’m afraid he doesn’t see the children, at least not as much as I’d like. And then, too, Danny just doesn’t understand why religion can be so important for some people. Some people—me, for instance—feel the complexity of things and we know that there are beacons that guide us, help us make our way. In that sense, he doesn’t understand me. But he is dear, and beautiful, and doing very well in his hotel business, so don’t worry.”

But Henry did worry, and felt he had to prepare himself, when he did see Caroline and talked with her, for a metamorphosis—or was it a mutation? The evolution had been from Danny-Caroline, absolutely perfect marriage, to Danny-Caroline, less than absolutely perfect marriage, to Danny-Caroline.… Could it be that she was actually unhappy?

He put back the letters and wished that the next hour, sixty everlasting minutes, would fragment into one second, allowing him to board his flight. He was itching with fatigue. Should he take another cup of coffee? Maybe a drink?

He would take a bottle of beer.

The middle-aged bartender managed to display what had been a sergeant’s chevrons on the khaki shirt he wore as a retired civilian employee of the military center. The bartender was glad for a customer, glad for the opportunity to chat. “You press?”

“Yes.
Time
mag.”

“I don’t read
Time.
”

“Oh? I’m sorry.” Henry knew, from much experience, that in such situations as this the antagonist wished to be asked
why
he did not read
Time.
Henry would not give him the satisfaction. The bartender waited, then picked up the conversation again.

“Did you cover the Diem funeral?”

“There was no Diem funeral,” Henry said, lighting one of his cheroots.

“Well, I’m not so sure he deserved one.”

Henry bit. “Why?”

“He was persecuting the Buddhists.”

Henry shuddered at the inevitability of a hundred such conversational encounters in the thirty days ahead of him before his return to duty in Saigon. He would need to develop little escape hatches. “My mother was a Buddhist.”

“Oh? She oriental?”

“No, actually. Her mother and father were Irish Catholics, but when she was in college she spent junior year in New Delhi and was converted. I’m on my way to her funeral.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. What happened?”

“She burned herself to death.”

“Why?”

“To protest Diem.” Henry put down the empty beer glass, thanked the bartender, and walked mournfully in the direction of the boarding area. In fact, he felt slightly better, awakened by the exchange. A little infield practice, he thought.

He did a lot of sleeping between Guam and Honolulu, San Francisco, New York. But when he landed at Idlewild Airport he began to suspect that his fatigue might have another cause than merely the very long hours he had spent awake in the last week in Saigon. And he didn’t want to see Caroline until he was well.

It was too late to see a doctor, but he called Miss Allison at
Time
, who did everything for the magazine’s foreign correspondents, and told her he might be sick. She told him to call in the next morning. She would tell him who to see, where, and at what time. “Symptoms?” she asked.

“Just total fatigue, can’t seem to shake it.”

“Maybe you’ve picked up mononucleosis.”

And yes, that was what he had picked up.

For one week he would be an outpatient of Lenox Hill Hospital, taking antibiotics and Vitamin B shots, drinking lots of water,
getting lots of sleep. He should be fine in about a week. A week! Twenty-five percent of his leave.

He would not go to Greenwich until he was fit. And he would not tell Caroline that he had been one week in New York without calling. Let alone Danny.

I
T WAS ON THE FIFTH DAY of Henry’s stay in New York that he saw the
Herald-Tribune
’s obituary on Giuseppe Martino. Henry learned details about Danny’s employer he hadn’t known before. Giuseppe Martino had immigrated as a very young man to New York, went to work at age fourteen as a busboy at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, left New York to fight in the First World War, returned to Chicago, formed a syndicate, built a hotel …

And so on. He was the sole known stockholder of Martino Enterprises. The only surviving member of his large family was Angelina Martino of Phoenix. The funeral would be at St. Agnes Church on Forty-third Street and Lexington Avenue, at 11
A.M.
on Wednesday.

Tomorrow. Henry went to the telephone and called his sister.
She was overjoyed to hear from him. “You said you had a leave coming up soon but you never gave the exact dates!”

He didn’t tell Caroline when he had arrived. He gave the impression he had just got to town: “I saw the clipping this morning on Mr. Martino. Was it sudden?”

“He lived four, five days after the stroke.”

“Was he seeing people?”

“Danny went to the hospital—he called for Danny. But there wasn’t any conversation. It was good that Danny could hold his hand.”

“Yes. Danny okay?”

“Yes, he’s fine. When will you come to us?”

“You’ll be at the funeral. Shall I go to Greenwich after that?”

“You will go to Greenwich this afternoon. At the latest.”

Henry felt better.

Giuseppe Martino was hardly a member of the family, so the death of the eighty-four-year-old did not dampen the spirits of the house. Uncle Henry was a great favorite of the children, and Henry was there to play with them when they came back from school. He went with the two oldest to catechism class at St. Catherine’s, Riverside, nearby. Sitting behind the children in the large new church with its modernist stained-glass windows, Henry was reminded by the nun that the twenty docile but animated children sitting in front of him with their catechism books were actually thought to be capable of sin. “Jesus died for all our sins. That means your sins too, Tommy. And don’t just stare at me, trying to look like an angel. You have probably sinned at least twice since breakfast. Right, Tommy?”

“Right, sister.”

“And you, Emily. Have you been patient and helpful to your sisters and brothers?”

Emily giggled.

“I thought so,” said Sister Aloysius, her whole face a doleful frown. “You see—we all commit sins. Now we will say one Our Father and one Hail Mary, and I will see you next week. Don’t forget to say your prayers at night and in the morning.”

The children scurried out, Emily and Tommy into the backseat of their mother’s station wagon. Henry sat in front with his sister. The children chattered and giggled, and when the car drove up to the entrance of the house after a short drive, they threw themselves out of the car and ran at full gallop into the large, gabled house to which a wing had been attached since Henry last saw it, nine months and one baby O’Hara earlier.

It was cold and windy, the trees were bare, the Sound gray. Caroline fastened the brake. “You look tired, Henry, and thin. We’ll have to coddle you.” She kissed him on the cheek.

Not the time to talk to her, Henry decided, returning her kiss with a playful hug.

Danny was, by contrast, very talkative. He had three times filled up his own glass with gin and tonic before dinner, and forced Henry to have a second. After dinner he ignored Caroline, who nursed a single glass of wine as she knitted. Danny spoke at unconfined length about the political situation. “I don’t see how they can beat JFK next year. It actually looks as though the GOP will put up Barry Goldwater. Suicide time, right, Henry?”

“I don’t know. Kennedy’s got a lot of—”

“I mean, Goldwater will scare people to death. He’s thought of, by an increasing number of people, as a wild man. Look at Vietnam. I mean, what would ‘President Goldwater’ do there? Well, Henry, Vietnam—you’re on. Tell us about Vietnam.… Though come to think of it, since both of us”—he nodded at Caroline—“read
Time
magazine every week, I guess we both know what you think about—Is everything we read in
Time
about Vietnam something you wrote?”

“Well, there’s the editorial—”

“Well, sure.” Danny poured himself another glass of wine. “There’s that, of course, editing at headquarters. There always is.”

Henry decided to stray from the subject. “Speaking of editorial processing, how active was Mr. Martino in the affairs of the company?”

“Not at all. Last couple of years, I doubt he knew where he had hotels.”

“Well, Danny, now that he’s gone, who’ll get the stock? His sister, the old lady in Phoenix?”

“Angelina?” He laughed. It was a little raucous, Henry thought, that laugh. “Giuseppe couldn’t
stand
Angelina. I’m sure he made some arrangement to make sure she’d be comfortable. But give her the stock?”

“Well, who
does
get the stock?” Caroline asked the question.

Danny’s face turned grave. For a moment he was silent. “Nobody knows. Probably some foundation, with the voting stock kept separate. Maybe a self-perpetuating board of directors, that kind of thing.”

“When will it be known?” Henry asked.

Danny sighed. “I just have no idea how these things work. Giuseppe did all his legal work with Lombardo Cellini, and after he died, with Lombard Junior. He’ll be at the funeral.” He paused. “I think it’s perfectly okay for me to ask him. You know, ask him about the voting stock, who gets it. After all, I am accountable to the board of directors of Martino Enterprises, which means right now I answer to Giuseppe’s chauffeur, cook, maid and valet. Yes, I’ll ask tomorrow. When do you go back to Saigon, Henry?”

Henry told him he’d be back inside of a month, and that during his stay he intended to spend time in Washington talking with people at the State Department and with Indochina experts at Georgetown. “You’ve never been to the Far East, Danny. Why don’t you and Caroline come on over? Exciting things are happening in Tokyo. I could meet you there for a few days.”

“Take Caroline away from the kids? She’d faint with longing. Might as well propose she go around the world in a sailboat. Well,” he laughed heavily, “at least in a rocking sailboat it wouldn’t be all that easy to create more little O’Haras.” Henry stole a glance at his sister. She didn’t look up.

“Tell you what I’m thinking.” Danny now seemed truly interested. “What I’m thinking—I haven’t told this to you, Caroline—what I’m thinking is maybe to run for the Senate. Now listen.” Danny stood up and walked over to the fireplace, placing his right arm on the mantelpiece.

It was rather a heroic pose, Danny thought. He looked over at Caroline. She had resumed knitting.

“I don’t care what they say. Ken Keating is vulnerable. This is a
Democratic
state. Keating beat Irving Ives in fifty-eight, so who
couldn’t
beat Irving Ives—Wallace Beery? Ken has had his day in the sun, predicting that stuff about Castro and the Soviet missiles. So, he had a pretty good informant, I grant that, and he milked the hell out of the missile crisis a year ago. But really, he’s going too far. You know his last thing, don’t you?”

“About how the Soviets left a missile or two in Cuba?”

“Yeah. Well, he’s getting close to kook time. And there’s been a solid reversal of public sentiment. The John Birch Society has done a lot to discredit anticommunism. So I figure this: If Rockefeller pulls out of Albany and beats Goldwater for the GOP nomination, there’ll be a serious fight for the White House, and Keating might have a chance to slide back in. But if it’s Goldwater versus JFK, Keating’s got a problem. And that problem could be—”