Memorial Bridge (57 page)

"I want it all."

"You can't go public with what Bowers was doing."

"What can they do to Bowers? He's dead."

"The file includes what the other sources sent too."

"Just Bowers's material, Mike. Isolate it. It's enough to make my point."

"It'll finish you."

"That I used the pouch with one of my own men?"

"In explicit defiance of CINCPAC's direct order."

"Look, Mike, they know from my reports that I had back-channel numbers. They don't care. They write me off."

"They'll care if now you try to flank them by bringing in someone outside of government."

"Mr. Crocker?" Dillon laughed.

"He's been out of government for years."

"Yes, like Averell Harriman has, and Chester Bowles and Dean Acheson and Clark Clifford. Look, Mike, the fact that we're losing this war is not a secret from the enemy. The VC and the NVA know what their numbers are. They know they can match us step for step if we keep the battlefield in the South, right up to a million men. The fact that we're fighting this war exactly the way they want us to is only a secret from the President. The President, Mike. I've been wasting my time with the secretary and the chiefs. The President—we have to bring him into the secret whether he wants to be there or not. He keeps saying the Communists are on the run. He wants it to be true so much, he thinks it is true. Listen, not two hours ago I almost grabbed him by the shoulder—Lyndon B. Johnson—in the middle of a funeral Mass. He was sitting right in front of me. If I'd known about Bowers, I would have grabbed him. It's just as well I didn't, of course, because he would have shrugged me off. But some men in this country he can't shrug off. And one of them is Crocker."

The intercom buzzed. When Dillon pressed it his secretary said, "Mr. Crocker on the line, sir." Dillon thanked her and picked up his phone.

"Mr. Crocker? This is Sean."

"Hello, Sean. It's good to hear your voice."

"Thank you, sir."

"How's Cass? How's my Richard?"

"They're well, sir. They're fine." A lie, a grotesque lie, but Cass and Richard were not the point, and anyway, the inquiry was form. If Crocker had family, Dillon would have asked of them now. Crocker lived alone in Gramercy Park. "I need to see you, sir. Right away."

After a long pause Crocker said, "I expected a call like this sooner."

"I wish I'd made it sooner. Can I come up today? I could be there in two hours."

"Come ahead then."

"At your office, sir?"

Crocker did not answer, and for a moment Dillon thought the line had gone dead. "I'm retired," Crocker said at last. "I don't have an office."

"Retired, sir?" This was news to Dillon. The last he'd heard Crocker was still active at his firm. Even if, in his late seventies, he'd slowed up, he'd have kept his office. Dillon glanced over at Packard, who was watching him deadpan.

"Meet me at the Metropolitan Club. We'll have a drink."

"My thought, sir, was something private."

"Where are you calling from, the Pentagon?"

"Yes, sir. My office."

"Look, General, I think I should say right here at the top..."

General? When had Randall Crocker ever called him General?

"...that I'm not interested in discussing government business. I don't do that anymore. That's why there's no point in our meeting in private. But I'd love to see you for old times' sake." The warmth had returned to Crocker's voice. "It's been too long."

"Yes, sir. It has." Crocker had come to Boiling for dinner with Cass and Richard the summer before, but at the last minute Sean couldn't get home. Cass had not mentioned his retiring.

"Then I'll see you for drinks in the bar at the club? Shall we say five? Or do you say 'seventeen hundred' yet?"

Dillon laughed. Who besides Crocker knew the mental block he'd first had against the twenty-four-hour military clock? "Five o'clock, Mr. Crocker. See you then."

When he'd hung up the phone, Dillon swung back to Packard.

Mike Packard knew about that mental block. Mike had been there too. It was not true that Sean Dillon trusted no one but himself. He trusted Mike. He picked up a pencil and pointed at the phone. He exhaled a slow steady breath, then said quietly, "Crocker thinks this telephone is tapped."

New York's Metropolitan Club was on Fifth Avenue, but it had a discreet entrance off the busy, inconspicuous side street: a wrought-iron gate, a cobblestone courtyard, a small paneled door. The club steward greeted Sean as "Mr." Dillon, not "General," and he was surprised how natural it seemed. In his dark blue suit, red tie and cordovan shoes, his briefcase at his side, he knew he looked like every man who ever entered the place.

Inside there was nothing discreet about the Metropolitan Club. Opposite a huge fireplace, a sweeping marble staircase led up to the main rooms. Its balustrade featured miniature columns with ornate Corinthian capitals. The rooms themselves, both the dining rooms and the bar, had similar columns at entrances, in corners and spaced at freestanding intervals, but those pillars were oversized, not miniature, because the
rooms, interiors soaring for three stories, were enormous. When the steward showed Dillon into the bar, he laughed to himself. The tables and chairs with huge winged backs were spread so far apart and, at that, were so sparsely occupied, there was no question of not having privacy here. Twenty priests could hear confessions, he thought, and at that moment he saw Crocker sitting in an especially isolated corner, waiting to hear his.

Crocker did not rise to greet Sean. The aluminum walker he used now, instead of a cane, was beside his chair. It was always a surprise to think of this man as a cripple. They shook hands warmly. Crocker patted the vacant chair next to him. Dillon sat. The chair had its back to the room. Because of its wings only Crocker could see him. Crocker could also see, without turning his head, the entrance to the bar. He had positioned himself as if he were a Mafia chieftain.

Dillon thought to make small talk while waiting for their drinks. "You brought me to a club of yours before."

"The Metropolitan in Washington. I recruited you."

Dillon nodded. "Everything follows from what you said to me in that club. Everything of mine, I mean."

"And much of mine, Sean. Much of what I'm proudest of." Crocker looked quickly and emotionally away.

Small talk? Sean studied his old friend, his mentor. Crocker looked far older than when Dillon had last seen him, perhaps six months before. It shamed Dillon that he had not been in touch with the man for his own sake. Now, instead of dressing fastidiously, Crocker managed only to dress with a nostalgia for his former style. He wore a good three-piece tweed suit but it needed pressing. His yellow bow tie, faded and wrinkled at the knot, still lent a touch of flamboyance to Crocker's appearance, but it was undercut by what to Dillon was a shocking show of dandruff on his shoulders.

"You look well, Mr. Crocker," Dillon lied.

"I wish I could say the same for you, Sean. Your taste in clothes has improved, but you look exhausted. You look lousy."

Sean laughed. "I need a vacation. So does Cass."

The waiter brought their drinks. They watched while the man placed their napkins and glasses of gin and the bowl of nuts. Then he left.

Dillon took a sip. The rush of alcohol to his brain released the first set of locks.

"What's wrong with Cass?"

Sean looked up sharply. "Who said anything about Cass?"

Crocker sipped his own drink, then put it down again and said nothing.

"We had an unfortunate scene this morning at the archbishop's funeral. The President was there and—"

"I heard about it."

Dillon was surprised. "Retired, but not off the tickler," he said lightly, but it made him angry to think the incident at the Shrine, his son's outrageous, insulting act, had been the subject of insider gossip all day. A hundred people present at the Shrine would have known not only who Richard was but who he was, a kind of godson, to Randall Crocker. Dillon shrugged with resignation, saying only, "Cass was devastated."

"And you, Sean. How were you?"

Instead of answering, Dillon lit a cigarette. He took his time. He waved his match out slowly. Finally he said, "Mr. Crocker, what happened at the Shrine is not what I'm here to talk about."

"You're here to talk about the war."

Dillon knew it had to be obvious. Still, he was surprised at Crocker's direct statement. He felt cautious suddenly and did not respond.

"You're here to tell me we're losing the war, and you want me to use my influence with the President's friends so they can get him to see that."

Dillon touched his briefcase. "Mr. Crocker, I'd prefer to let you draw your own conclusions. I've brought some material for you to read. It will make the point better."

Crocker pushed against his chair, scraping it back, an expression of shock on his face. He glanced quickly around the room, then said too loudly, "I'm not reading anything, Sean. You know I don't have clearances."

Dillon stared impassively at the only man toward whom he'd ever felt—he could call it devotion. What had happened to him?

Crocker then brought himself forward, and when he talked quietly now it made Dillon even more uneasy than when he'd been too loud. "I don't need 'material' to know the war is a disaster. I'm a lawyer. So are you. You could have been one of my lawyers. The first thing a lawyer does when he's offered a case is decide if it's a loser or not. He might take it anyway. But he's got to know from the start if it's a loser. Are you just discovering that Vietnam is a loser?"

Dillon smiled and exhaled his smoke. He still did not know what he was dealing with. He shook his head.

"Well, Sean, why are you up here in New York City offering me 'material'? Why aren't you showing them on E-Ring? Why not McNamara? Why aren't you telling him what you know?"

"I do tell him. I tell him in person at oh-eight-thirty hours every Tuesday and Thursday. And every morning, between black folders, I give him the numbers that MACV gives me. I flag those numbers with yellow every chance I get."

"For caution? Or for cowardice?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I was thinking of McNamara."

"McNamara knows better than anyone the hole we've dug for ourselves. He's paralyzed now because he also knows the minute that he describes the true dimensions of that hole to the President, he's gone. The Pentagon is full of ghosts now, the ghosts of men who raised questions or expressed doubts. So is Foggy Bottom. That's why I am here. The President does not accept bad news from people who work for him. Our problem has become that simple. That is why the President thinks we're winning. I'm here looking for people who don't work for him, to whom he might listen, people he associates with Roosevelt..."

Crocker was shaking his head with such a depth of feeling, of sadness, that Dillon had to stop.

"I have a question for you, Sean."

"What?"

"Why aren't you one of those ghosts?"

Dillon said nothing.

"Why are you still a part of this thing? We've got American boys dying in jungles over there for nothing. You know that. And you've known it for a long time. Talk about ghosts! And you remain a part of it. Sean, I have to say I'm surprised. The others don't surprise me, the chiefs, the field commanders, the admirals, the marines, the bomber generals, the gung-ho and the can-do! But you, Sean. You weren't like those others. That was the point about you. You were something else. And now you tell me that some of them are gone—admirals and generals—gone because they told the boss what he didn't want to hear. But you are still there, Sean. Why is that? Because you deal in yellow
flags? What about red flags? Forgive me, I'm just trying to understand. Why are you still there, Sean?"

Dillon said without hesitating, "I'm still there because my work isn't finished. It's that simple."

Crocker shrugged elaborately.

"But you, Mr. Crocker, were the one who taught me about complexity and compromise. I'm not pure, that's for sure. Nobody is who's had anything to do with Vietnam. But I was not pure when I worked for you. David Lothrop? Sylvia Yergin? General Macauley? Have you forgotten? Are you actually asking me to explain about the necessity of staying with a situation even if it's politically or morally ambiguous?"

"Ambiguous? Forgive me for asking, General, but what is your position on the war?"

Dillon answered coldly, "We are at war with Hanoi. We've stopped them from cutting the South in two and we've made our own bases secure. But that's it. That's as far as we get in the present setup. Bloody stalemate now, which I oppose with every ounce of my weight. We should have taken it to Hanoi in the beginning. A strategy of attrition was wrong. We're the ones attriting, not them. A strategy of political reconstruction in the South was wrong. The South is a political shambles. Now it may be too late, for North and South both. Still, if only to justify the lives of the men we've already lost, I would try. We could win yet, but it would take full mobilization, a full invasion of the North, a total blockade of Haiphong. Shut off China and Russia, seal the whole country, and then fight them. If we can't sell that to the American people, then we get out right now. In or out, I don't care which. But whatever it is, we do it all the way. And I am going to stay in my job until one direction or the other is set. I'm not quitting, to be replaced by an intelligence chief who, when he sees an American funeral pyre, calls it the light at the end of the tunnel."

"You don't care which?"

"I care that the line we draw against communism is a line we will stand by. Where that line is? We elect people in this country to make decisions like that. People like me carry them out. I accept that. What nauseates me is a government that ducks the decision, that wants it both ways. So now we have it neither. And you're right, boys are dying in the jungle for nothing."

"How many have died by now?"

"Fourteen thousand seven hundred, plus. This morning one of my people died."

"That's why you're here. To justify what happened to him."