No Way to Treat a First Lady (29 page)

"How can this be, Frigby?" he pleaded.

The chief of staff looked away. Harold Farkley's pain was too much to watch.

"Sir," said Frigby, "the majority of the American people can be pretty obtuse, when you come right down to it."

"What are you saying?"

"You need to get rid of this issue, sir."

"Goddammit, Frigby. Goddammit, Henderson."

"Yes, sir."

"What I'm about to tell you must go no further than this room," Roscoe Farquant said to Judge Dutch. It was 10:30 at night. They were alone, having both entered the vacant chambers of another judge, one half hour apart, by separate doors.

"I can keep a secret, General," Judge Dutch said a bit stiffly. "The FBI agents who vetted me for this position will attest to that."

"Let's leave the FBI out of this," said General Farquant. "First you should have some background."

When he had finished, Judge Dutch's glasses had completely misted over.

"General," he finally said, "you've thrown a monkey wrench the size of the Washington Monument into my trial."

"NSA's charter is strictly collective. We are not an investigative agency. You can see why it made no sense—more to the point, why we were unable, from the standpoint of national security—to come forward with any of this."

"Whatever," said Judge Dutch, who liked every now and then to show his command of current English slang. "But this impeaches the testimony of one of the leading witnesses in the trial."

"Notwithstanding, this was a highly classified intelligence-gathering operation. Until it was compromised by Mr. Sinclair."

"How did he know about it?"

"Presumably from his employers in Beijing."

"How did
they
know?"

"That question raises a multiplicity of modalities. Obviously, Log Cabin was compromised. At any rate, by alerting Mr. Baylor to its existence, Mr. Sinclair has effectively rendered any intelligence we gained from Log Cabin useless. That, obviously, was his objective, to protect Mr. Grab."

"But you told me you didn't get anything on Grab."

General Farquant sighed. "No, we did not. Our conclusion ultimately was that Mr. Grab does not discuss his dealings with Indonesian middlemen for Chinese intelligence with his wife."

"Grab got the Indonesian oil contracts, President MacMann got covert contributions to his reelection campaign from the Chinese military? Laundered through Grab's offshore corporations. Is that it?"

"Essentially. That being the case, you can perhaps see why electronic surveillance of Mr. Grab was warranted."

"Why didn't you just plant the bugs on him directly, at his home?"

"I would rather not go into that, Judge. It's highly sensitive."

"I'm highly insensitive. Go into it. I insist."

"The NSA is not allowed to spy on American citizens within the United States. We found a loophole."

"Go on."

"The White House is a federal facility. You do not need a court order to conduct surveillance within a federal facility. If the bug happens to leave the federal facility, we have no control over that. If you follow."

"That's some loophole. So you bugged not only the Lincoln Bedroom, but the personal effects of the people staying in it, so that when they left, you could continue to listen in."

General Farquant nodded. "Cell phones, PalmPilots, laptops."

"Why not just rely on the FBI and CIA to take care of it?"

"After the Wiley P. Sinclair incident, the Aldrich Ames incident, the Hanssen incident, our faith in the integrity of the CIA's and FBI's ability to keep secrets was, you will appreciate, minimized. And if you can't trust the CIA and FBI, who can you trust?"

"The NSA, apparently," Judge Dutch said somewhat tartly. "But if you were only after Max Grab, why did you tape six hundred and seventy-two other people?"

"Judge, I came here to convey to you privately that if a subpoena by the defendant were narrowed to one particular tape, that of September twenty-eight, then NSA might not contest the subpoena. Otherwise..."

"The NSA might just declare that no such tapes exist. And burn them all. Is that it? And that's the end of it?"

"I'm not in a position to comment on that."

"Boyce!" Beth was speaking on a cell phone given her by a Washington girlfriend, out of view of the Secret Service. She had dialed a pay phone in Arlington, just within the outer limits of the radius within which Boyce was permitted to travel pending the disposition of his own criminal case. "They just called. Dutch is going to allow the subpoena, provided we limit it to the one tape."

"That's great news. But..."

"What?"

"Don't you want to hear what's on those
other
six hundred and seventy-two tapes?"

"Not right now."

"I want to be there in court when they play it. I'll wear a disguise. I'm getting good at them."

"Just stay in the car. For God's sake, Boyce."

"Your SS men want to shoot me. The looks they give me."

"Hold on. Oh jeez, it just came over the news."

"What?"

"Babette. Guess who's representing her?"

"Not—"

"Alan Crudman."

Alan Crudman was notorious within the legal fraternity for billing his clients not only for his legal services, but for going on television to talk about them. Typically, he would talk about them for five minutes and then devote the rest of his airtime to plugging his latest book, each of which was, "in all modesty, my best."

Within hours of being hired by Max Grab—now said to be "in seclusion" in either Macao or Kuala Lumpur—to represent Babette, Crudman's publisher announced that his book on the case, provisionally titled
Tape Rape: The Framing of Babette Van Anka,
would be in stores two weeks after the trial ended.

The night before he accompanied Babette to court, Alan Crudman managed to appear on all three television networks, plus half a dozen cable shows, for an estimated $17,500 aggregate of billable hours.

However, despite successfully squeezing himself into the final round of the Trial of the Millennium, he faced the nightmarish fact that ultimately it was not
about
Alan Crudman.

Eighty percent of the American public might detest Boyce, but they loved watching him. After months of listening to Alan Crudman drone endlessly on television about how he would have handled it all, no one, really, was in the mood for much more of his self-glorifying yadda-yadda. Judge Dutch certainly wasn't.

"If it please the court"—Crudman rose—"we ask for a delay in order to file a motion to suppress this so-called evidence."

"Denied."

"But Your Honor—"

"Sit down, Mr. Crudman."

A ripple of laughter went through the press section.

"With all respect, I will be heard," Crudman said hotly.

"Mr. Crudman, this is not
Hard Gavel.
But I will," Judge Dutch said, raising his own hammer of authority in a distinctly minatory way, "use this if you remain standing one more second."

Crudman sat, flushing redder than a boiled ham. He whispered to a pallid Babette, "I'll crush him on appeal."

This remark was caught by the network lip-reader and duly relayed to the viewing public, along with the obligatory preface that the correspondent was just guessing at what Crudman was saying to his client.

NSA tape number 4322-LC was duly entered into evidence. A special master of evidence had been appointed by the court to take custody of it once the NSA had handed it over.

Judge Dutch warned those who were "participating" in the proceedings via television that the tape they were about to hear contained material of an
adult
nature. This had the effect of causing every teenager in America flipping through TV channels to stop right here.

"You may start the tape," Judge Umin instructed the clerk of the court.

"Oh, baby, baby, baby,
Mr. President..."

Heads turned toward Babette, slumped forward in her seat. There was speculation that she had, in fact, died.

The media section was in extremis. When they heard the sound of a violently creaking boxspring mattress along with repeated thumps—evidently the sound of a head, either Babette's or the President's, smacking against the venerable Lincoln headboard—several of them temporarily lost control. They saved themselves from expulsion by masking their laughter as tubercular coughing fits.

Presently a prolonged "Unh" was heard on the tape.

A groan of male exhaustion, then forced purring: "Nothing wrong with
you!"
Then, "Would you like me to...?" Followed by a female gasp of surprise and the sound of something suspiciously genital being plunged into water and ice cubes. Then an apparently valedictory grunt and the sound of a door opening and closing.

The judge ordered the clerk to stop the tape.

There was silence in the courtroom.

Crudman rose in his seat. "We challenge the authenticity of this tape and move to have it stricken from the record. This is obviously an attempt,
by
the government and, if I may,
by
this court to impugn the testimony of Ms. Van Anka."

The consensus of the pixel pundits that night on TV was that Crudman, confronted with this steaming evidence, had decided to try to shift the attention back to his own glorious self by provoking Judge Dutch to find him in contempt. However, Judge Dutch did not rise to this bait, instructing him simply, once again, to sit down and shut up—using, of course, rather more dignified language.

Crudman responded to this indignity by going on network TV that night and hinting that the judge was "anti-Semitic." It was an odd assertion, given that Judge Dutch was himself a member of the tribe. Confronted with this inconvenient fact, Crudman shot back that the judge was a "self-hating Semite." It was the general consensus that the only Semite toward whom Judge Dutch might be anti was Alan Crudman, but this was no serious charge, since it put him squarely in the mainstream of American public opinion.

It was not a quiet tableau outside Babette's hotel, the Elegant, a few blocks away from her previous home away from home, the White House. Several hundred cameramen had assembled, it was suggested, so that they would be on hand when Babette leapt out her seventh-story window. In his television interviews that night, Boyce said she really should have stayed at the Jefferson, where the management was so notably hospitable toward participants in the trial.

The scene inside Babette's suite at the Elegant was no less tumultuous. Her entourage now consisted of Crudman and his team of half a dozen lawyers and investigators doing what they could to gird Babette's loins against an almost certain criminal indictment for perjury; her nutritionist; trainer; yoga instructor; doctor armed with hypodermics and state-of-the-art beta-blockers; her publicist, Nick Naylor, now upping his own daily dosage of Prozac; and three of her most stalwart sycophants, flown in from Los Angeles to remind her how fabulous she looked and what a great movie this was all going to make—taking care not to say, "After you get out of prison, darling."

Boyce and Beth lay on the floor of her Cleveland Park aerie. They could hear the hum of the media satellite trucks parked outside the gates. Boyce's own traveling press stakeout team had followed him here, but at this point so what.

Boyce was going over court transcripts. Beth filled out legal pad after legal pad with questions for her impending cross-examination of Babette.

"I like to think that I'm a reasonably compassionate person," Beth said. "But to be honest, I'm looking forward to crucifying her."

Boyce held up the transcript of the tape recording. "Where she says, 'Nothing wrong with
you.'
Here, line twenty-five. Tell me what you know about that."

"It's the sort of thing women tell men to make them feel good. Hasn't anyone ever told you that?"

"As a matter of fact, no."

Beth patted him on the rear. "They will."

" 'They'? You mean the attractive large men with tattoos I'm going to meet in prison?"

A look of pain came over her. "Boyce. It's not
funny."

"I'm not laughing. All right, let's take it one trial at a time. We have two problems. First, we were the ones who made Babette out to be the chaste and faithful Mrs. Grab and patroness of peace in the Middle East. We were the ones who gave her an alibi, that she was in bed with curlers watching Elizabeth Taylor on TV screaming at Richard Burton.
Now
you're going to be telling her, You lying slut, you were in there
schtupping
my husband. That hangs her on a hook. But it doesn't get you off yours. Because now you really have a motive for killing him."

"It's a problem."

"So let's look at this 'Nothing wrong with
you.'
What's going on here?"

"She's flattering him on his performance."

"Beth, the man sounded like he was dying."

"All men sound like they're dying when they make love."

"And all women sound like they're pretending to die? Putting aside the sexual politics for a moment. Okay, they're banging away, someone's head is bashing against the headboard—which, by the way, you will contend was
his
head, which
completely
compromises the Revere bruise. Excellent. So they're screwing away... he sounds like he's about to collapse... she's going 'Oh, baby, baby,
Mr. President'
—a little kinky, by the way—and they finish.
Unhhhh.
Now she flatters him on his performance. He doesn't respond. Then there's this gasp coming from her. Here, line thirty-four, almost like he's coming after her again for more, which isn't likely since he sounds like he's about to have a heart attack... and that sound of ice and water. Is he drinking? Did he have booze on his breath when he got back to the room?"

"I don't know. I didn't kiss him. He wasn't a boozer, though. There's always a carafe of ice water on the nightstand when guests are staying."

"Did he usually drink water after banging you?"