Palace Council (45 page)

CHAPTER
61

Again the Golden Boy

(I)

T
HE YEAR
1970
MELTED
into 1971, and still there was no word of Junie. Eddie wondered if his sister might have fled the country. There was political violence everywhere. The Baader-Meinhof Gang was robbing banks in Germany. Could Junie have joined them? The Front de Libération du Québec kidnapped a British diplomat. In Uruguay, the Tupamaros kidnapped another. Had Junie been involved? Somebody had to know. Despite his outward cynicism, Eddie, like many American radicals before and since, harbored a childlike wonder at the Godlike powers of his government. It was not possible for them to have misplaced Junie so thoroughly. Therefore, it was a plot. A conspiracy. Not human failing. Human malice. What he could not supply was a motive.

Eddie still found topics for essays. A Supreme Court decision on busing. The Pentagon Papers. But his writing had lost its sparkle, and everybody knew it. The promised Hong Kong novel languished. He roamed the huge house, unable to concentrate. Sometimes he visited Aurelia. Sometimes she visited him. Sometimes she found him unbearable.

In September, riots erupted at Attica. The prisoners took hostages. The assault by police and National Guard units three days later led to the largest killing of Americans by Americans in the twentieth century. One of the inmates who died was Maceo Scarlett, a leader of the uprising. Harlem had forgotten the Carpenter, so Eddie paid for his funeral. Only a dozen mourners showed up, but one of them was Bernard Stilwell.

Later, he and Eddie had a bite to eat.

“I never told you why I left the Bureau,” said the retired agent. He was pale. His hands shook. “The Director is an old man, Eddie. He's sick. One of his sickest ideas was something called the Counterintelligence Program, or COINTELPRO. You've never heard of it. You will soon. You know Hoover liked to collect information on powerful men. The sort of thing I bugged you for when you were at the White House. Well, COINTELPRO puts some of the information to use. The Bureau infiltrates any group the Director considers radical. Some of them are violent. The Panthers. Weatherman. But a lot of them are just people the Director disagrees with. We kept tabs on all the civil-rights leaders. I helped run the program for a while, Eddie. I know.”

Stilwell coughed. His chest rattled. Sympathy welled unexpectedly. “Why are you telling me this?” Eddie asked, more gently than he would have expected.

“I don't have too much time left. You guessed that, didn't you?” Another cough. “Maybe I want to make amends. Maybe I just don't want to die with certain things on my conscience.” He sipped his coffee. “Eddie, the Bureau had Agony marked down from the beginning. Those kids couldn't make a move we wouldn't know about. When your sister joined up—when she had her training sessions in Rockland County, when she was in the safe house in Tennessee—all that time, the Director had his finger on them. Their name wasn't even Jewel Agony. That was something we made up to separate out the false confessions. Really they called themselves Perpetual Agony, and, well, anyway, we had them fully penetrated. Then they got away from us. That's the thing. They got some new help, professional, somebody who knew our methods as well as we did, and we lost touch. The Director was furious. A couple of people got demoted over that one.”

Professional help, Eddie was thinking. Maybe from a CIA man who used the name Ferdinand, who would have seen the Bureau's reports and wanted the woman he loved far from Hoover's clutches. Either the woman he loved or the terrorist organization the Palace Council had created, as Castle's testament put it, to scare America.

“The thing I want you to understand is this, Eddie. Until Agony got away from us, nobody ever died in its actions. This was when your sister was running it. But once we lost track of the group, Sharon Martindale took charge, and people started dying. That's what I wanted you to know.”

Eddie did understand. And could have kicked himself for not seeing it earlier. The dates in the source reports he had read in Ithaca matched up perfectly with the dates of Agony's actions. The 1963 Birmingham bombing, the first fatal attack by Agony, occurred when Junie was in Ghana. Then, in 1965, after Agony killed Kevin Garland, Junie renounced violence. She was stripped of her authority, and within a year or two, she left to find her children. After Junie's departure, Agony kept on killing.

With Sharon in charge—and Perry Mount pulling the strings.

No wonder he wanted Junie found.

(II)

A
T THE END
of 1971, Eddie received his usual invitation to Byron Dennison's New Year's party. From Albemarle Street he called Aurie. Yes, she had hers, too. And she thought they should go.

“You're joking.”

“We should talk to him.”

“He's part of what's going on.”

“I'm not so sure,” she said after a moment. “I don't think he's a bad man.”

Against his better judgment, Eddie agreed. As usual, Aurelia drove the kids to Hanover just after Christmas. She and Eddie met in Boston. In the taxi, he was nervous. “He's not going to hurt us,” Aurie said.

“That's not what I'm worried about.”

“Then what's bothering you?”

He showed her the clipping from that morning's
Boston Globe,
an innocuous item most readers would have forgotten immediately after turning the page. The article spanned only three paragraphs, and was buried deep in the middle of the paper.
FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT AIDE TO ADVISE SEN. FROST,
the tiny headline decreed. The story reported that Lanning Frost had retained the services of a veteran of several foreign postings to help develop foreign-policy positions for his likely presidential run. Of course, the Senator was being schooled by experts galore, and nobody had ever heard of the new gentleman. But already, according to the final paragraph, Perry Mount—“a Negro graduate of Harvard”—was being mentioned by senior staffers as a possible National Security Adviser, should Lanning snatch the nomination from the favored Muskie in 1972.

Aurie said, “So, what do you want to do, Eddie? Call Gary back and tell him we accept his offer?”

But her man was lost in his own thoughts, and she knew when to leave him alone.

The party was as sumptuous as always. Bay was delighted to see them, and made a great fuss. The governor of Massachusetts pumped Eddie's hand as if he consorted with radical novelists every day. Claire Garland greeted Aurie as if they had never argued in their lives. The two old friends wound up sitting at a table with five or six other prominent women. Aurelia lost track of Eddie.

Then Chamonix Bing sat down beside her, and Aurelia knew there was going to be trouble, because her old friend's last name was now Mount.

Somebody asked the obvious question.

“Perry is wonderful,” Chammie enthused. “I love being married again, and to such a wonderful man. The children adore him, and he adores them. Jonathan especially. I couldn't be happier.”

But by now nobody was listening to her desperate assurances, because across the room a fight had broken out.

(III)

“T
HERE'S A MORAL HERE
,” said Byron Dennison as Aurelia applied Bactine to her lover's bleeding cheek. He held an ice pack on his split lip. “Never punch a man who's been in the CIA.”

They were sitting in the kitchen off the ballroom. Waiters streamed in and out the door. The noise of the party crackled. The revelers had taken the fisticuffs in stride. Perry and his wife had left.

“I wanted to do a lot more than punch him,” said Eddie.

“You never did like Perry,” said the Congressman. “Didn't he have a pretty big thing for your sister once upon a time? I wonder how he ever got a security clearance.”

“Maybe he had help,” Eddie growled, glaring at Bay.

Aurelia kissed him on the forehead. “Stop it.”

Dennison's eyes were thoughtful. “Maybe you want to tell me what's going on,” he said. “Maybe I can help.”

Eddie was still angry, and needed an outlet. “Like you tried to help before? Getting the woman I love to steer me away from Perry toward Junie?” He brushed Aurie's hand aside, and, shakily, stood. “What was the idea, Bay? To have me keep looking so your Palace Council could find her? Yes. I know about the Palace Council. And I know Perry is the Paramount. Well, does the Council know that its Paramount has had people killed? Or what he was up to in Hong Kong?”

The Congressman seemed as relaxed as ever. None of the chefs was close enough to hear. “Why don't you enlighten me?”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Not everybody's your enemy, Eddie. Some of us—well, we don't all agree with the direction in which Perry is taking things.” He nodded at Aurie. “Remember year before last? When you gave me that speech about how, when you do things in the darkness, you don't have anybody to tell you when you're wrong? Well, that's the problem with Perry. Burton was crazy, but in his heart he was a decent man. I'm not sure Perry is all that decent.”

Eddie was about to say something irretrievable, but Aurelia got in first. “So, it was Burton's plan to begin with?”

The Congressman nodded. “In a way. Burton was the head of the Empyreals, back in Harlem in the old days, and that's where all those silly names and phrases come from. The Paramount. Shaking the throne. All of that. They had mimicked
Paradise Lost
for decades. Maybe they thought it captured the story of the race. I don't know. The point is, when they all got together, Burton suggested using the same terms, and everybody liked them. And there it was. The Palace Council.” He pursed his lips. “And it was a joke. A big joke on the Empyreals. Of course Senator Van Epp let the black folks run the meeting. Of course he let everybody think that it was all Burton's idea. But it wasn't. Not really.”

“Burton was a figurehead,” said Aurelia.

“I don't think he ever knew,” said the Congressman. “Elliott Van Epp was a strange man. He'd been putting together his coterie of conspirators for a long time. He didn't really trust democracy. He thought it had to be guided. That was his big word. Guided. And a man like Burton, well, he was easily seduced. You see the point. Burton Mount thought he and his people were seducing the white folks in the room, and all the time it was the other way around. Go ahead, Van Epp and his friends were saying. Play your games. We're on your side—but only as long as you're useful to us.”

“And they're not useful any more?”

“I don't really know what the fuck is going on. That's the truth. Perry, well, for a while, I thought he was one of the dissenters. But not any more. He seems to have signed on for the big prize.”

“Why don't you stop him?” asked Aurelia.

Dennison smiled. “If I had the testament I could. Or if I had Junie.”

“Why is Junie so important?” said Aurie, her hand covering Eddie's mouth.

“I'll be honest. I don't know why. But Perry's fixated on her. I think she has something or knows something that would throw his, ah, interpretation of the Project off the tracks again. You saw my notes, Aurie. I realized that after you left. You saw my notes, and you figured I must be one of the bad guys. Well, I'm not. Eddie, the reason I wanted Aurie to direct you away from Perry was to protect you. I want you to find Junie to put an end to the whole thing.”

“Meaning, the election of Lanning Frost,” said Aurelia. “Lanning in the Oval Office, and Perry right down the hall, pulling the strings.”

The Congressman nodded heavily. “The Palace Council running the country.”

“You could go public,” Eddie began, and stopped. He remembered Benjamin Mellor in Saigon, describing how Hoover hoarded the information about the Council to himself. And his debates with Aurelia about the consequences for the darker nation if America came to believe that a part of its destiny was being secretly directed by a cabal of black men.

“I have to get back to my party,” said Dennison. “And the two of you have to get to work.” He had a hand on the swinging door. “And if you do find her—”

“I won't tell you,” said Eddie. “I'm sorry, Bay. I appreciate what you've said tonight, but, to be frank, I still don't trust you.”

“There isn't any reason that you should. I wasn't going to ask you to tell me, Eddie. I just meant—if you find her, make sure to use whatever she knows. You have to stop this travesty.”

He went out, just as the cheers erupted. The band broke into “Auld Lang Syne.” The year 1972 had begun.

CHAPTER
62

Beeswax

(I)

“A
THIRD-RATE BURGLARY
,” said Aurelia, sliding the
Ithaca Journal
across the table. “Dick's people say it was nothing. I talked to John Ehrlichman this morning. He says not to worry. He laughed. They're not involved, Eddie. They're going to win by a landslide. Why would they break into the offices of the Democratic National Committee?”

“I wouldn't put anything past Nixon.”

“You don't know him as well as I do.” She lifted a forkful of eggs. Having nobody left to tell—nobody who would believe their tale—they were trying, at least for now, to enjoy their lives. “I'm not saying he's the most honest person I've ever met. But he's a smart politician. Very smart. He wouldn't do anything this stupid. He'd be run out of town.”

Eddie chewed for a moment. He turned the pages of the newspaper. It was a lovely June morning in 1972. They were sitting in the kitchen of the house on Fall Creek Drive. The school year was over, and Aurelia's teenagers were sleeping in. Eddie had arrived early. Whenever he visited Ithaca, he spent his nights at the Statler, operated by Cornell University's hotel school. The children had grown accustomed to having the great Edward Trotter Wesley Junior hang around their mother. They called him Uncle Eddie, because there existed, as yet, no polite word for unmarried adult monogamy. No doubt Locke and Zora assumed that their mother sometimes slept with her beau. But Aurie, her Catholic upbringing never far away, preferred to maintain the fiction.

“I agree that Nixon is too smart,” Eddie said, “unless he was really worried about something.”

“Something like what?”

He looked at the newspaper again. The break-in was at a place called the Watergate, a large hotel, apartment, and office complex.

Aurelia sipped her coffee. “I talked to Granny Vee about you the other night.”

“Granny who?”

“Granny Vee. That's what Mona's kids call Amaretta since she moved in with them.” A moment while Eddie imagined that proud woman, once the mightiest Czarina in Harlem, living out her dwindling days in the spare room of her daughter's house in a lily-white New Hampshire college town. “Anyway, she calls me now and then. Offers me advice. I think it's because Mona won't listen to her.”

“What advice did she give you this time?”

“She wanted to know about—well, about us. You and me. She asked if I knew the difference between being hesitant and being patient.” Her eyes were thoughtful, and inward. “I told her I'd never given it much thought.”

“What's the difference? Did she tell you?”

“She said patience is a virtue because your future lies ahead of you, but the person who's hesitant has nothing to look forward to but the past.”

“Do you know what she was talking about?”

“Of course I do. Don't patronize me.” Aurelia shoved her chair back, nearly striking the aging Crunch, who had shambled into the room. “Sorry, honey,” she said—whether to Eddie or to the dog was not clear. “I'm just tense. I'm going to check on the kids.”

Eddie was not listening. He was staring at the newspaper.

“Honey?”

“I think I know what Nixon was worried about,” he said, not looking up. “Maybe he was at the meeting.”

“Nixon? A member of the Palace Council? That's ridiculous.”

“Why? Senator Van Epp was a law-and-order type. He was there.” Eddie's finger stabbed the page. “It would be something to hide, wouldn't it? To be present at a meeting where they set up a terrorist group?”

She shook her head. “Come on, Eddie. Nixon wasn't just some Senator. He was running for Vice President. He couldn't just slip away for a secret meeting with a bunch of black businessmen.”

They stared at each other.

“Matty—” she began.

“Was his friend and a big fund-raiser,” Eddie finished.

“That could have been everybody's cover story. It wasn't just a friendly dinner, it was a fund-raiser for the Republican ticket.”

“How can we find out?” Eddie wondered aloud. Then he answered his own question. “I'll call the Georgetown University Library. There's a woman there who can track down anything.”

Aurelia smiled. “I can do it quicker.”

“How?”

“I'll call Oliver Garland. He'll tell me.”

“Aurie—”

“I know, I know. He's Kevin's cousin. You're thinking he must be part of whatever's going on. But I'm not so sure. He has too much integrity.” She waved away Eddie's objection. “I know. I know. You don't believe in integrity. You think everybody acts out of self-interest. But, Eddie, think about it. You act out of love for Junie, right? You'd sacrifice your own interests for hers.”

“So?”

“So, why is it so hard to believe that somebody could love his country or his honor enough to make sacrifices?”

“What sacrifices did Oliver ever make? He was a Wall Street lawyer and now he's a federal judge! You don't think the Palace Council could have gotten him those jobs?”

“I think some people actually earn what they get.”

She went into her study to make the call. Eddie washed the dishes, dried them, put them away. The children came downstairs, first Zora, sixteen years of age, spindly and brilliant and awkward, then, minutes later, the charismatic Locke, not nearly as smart but twice as fun, and, at fourteen, already recognizable as the kind of kid who would be elected class president five times before his sister had her first date. Eddie scrambled eggs for them. Zora watched him intently but said nothing beyond good morning and yes, thank you. Locke was reading
Sports Illustrated.
He kept up a running patter, told jokes, and worked hard to draw Eddie into a conversation about Reggie Jackson of the Oakland Athletics, who had shocked baseball by growing a mustache, the first on any major league player since before World War I. But Eddie, who had no interest in sports, barely heard. He was busy watching the archway, waiting for Aurie's return. He was developing a new theory about what had happened to Junie. Much turned on the success of Aurelia's call.

(II)

B
Y A HAPPY CHANCE,
she reached Oliver at his house on Shepherd Street in Washington. His wife had broken her arm, and the man they called the Judge was home for a few days, helping out. Aurie was touched, but Claire, before she went to call her husband to the phone, whispered that he spent most of the time in his study, working.

When Oliver came on the line, Aurelia was too nervous to engage in many pleasantries. She explained what she wanted.

“I wasn't at the meeting,” he said. “The little I've heard about it all came to me secondhand. It's nothing but hearsay.”

“I understand that, Oliver. I'm not asking for any details. I just want to know if the meeting was a fund-raiser for Nixon.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I can't tell you that.” She hesitated. “I'm asking you to trust me.”

The Judge thought this over. “I don't think much of your friend Nixon, Aurie. I never have. He's too goal-oriented for my taste. I'm old-fashioned. I believe that games have rules, and you don't switch the rules around just because your side might lose if you play it straight. Nixon's the other way. Well, a lot of people are these days.” A longish pause. “I don't like what's been happening in this town the past few years,” the Judge resumed. “In politics. In journalism. In anything. And I especially don't like the way that people go around digging up dirt on their opponents. I used to think that politics was run by grown-ups. Now I'm not so sure. If you want dirt on Nixon, I'm not going to help.” Switching sides for a moment. But maybe integrity had a side of its own. “We're turning the voters into cynics, Aurie. The constant mudslinging is going to be the death of democracy.”

“I'm not trying to sling mud, Oliver. I just need to know this one fact. I can't tell you why, but, believe me, right now, if you love your country, nothing is more important than the answer to that question.”

Another long pause. For a moment she was sure she had lost him.

“No,” said the Judge finally. “The meeting was not to raise money for Nixon, or for Eisenhower, or for the presidential ticket. There. Does that answer your question?”

She returned to the kitchen in time to hear Locke asking Uncle Eddie when he was going to marry Mom.

“None of your beeswax,” she said, and kissed her children on their heads.

Later that morning, Eddie and Aurelia walked along Cayuga Lake.

“If the meeting wasn't a fund-raiser,” said Aurelia, “then it wouldn't make sense for Nixon to be there. They couldn't have kept his presence a secret.”

“So it would appear,” said Eddie, lost in thought.

(III)

E
DDIE LEFT
I
THACA
the following day. He made Aurelia promise to stay put. He could feel the battle lines forming. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen soon. The Watergate break-in was part of it. Of this Eddie was sure. He knew things Aurie did not. Knew them, and planned to act on them.

He had told Aurie that he was returning to Manhattan, but he needed an untapped telephone. He stopped overnight at a motel in New Rochelle. He called his former assistant Mindy, now happily married to Zach. An hour later, she got back to him with the arrangements.

In the morning, Eddie drove on to Rhode Island. This time Gary took him sailing, as if he, too, now worried about being overheard.

“It's very simple,” said Eddie after the sloop had glided for a while in the splendid flat silence. “I need to know which side you're on.”

“Side?” said Gary.

“Are you with Perry or with Bay?”

“I'm sorry?”

“One of the Hillimans was at the meeting, wasn't he? Look at me. In 1952, at Burton Mount's house. There was a Hilliman there. Your grandfather, I'd bet. He chose Erebeth as his heir, didn't he? The same way he chose her to handle the family fortune. He didn't care about this male-female business. He cared about who would do the best job exercising power. All those lessons Erebeth taught you. You're her chosen heir, Gary. We can't mess around any more. I don't know if you've been guarding my back or tracking my moves or both. I do know you're a member of the Palace Council.”

The bright-green eyes were steady. “No, Eddie. I'm not.”

“I don't believe you.”

“And I don't care if you believe me or not. There was no Hilliman at the meeting. Yes, I know about it. Erebeth told me the story before she died. Her father was approached, and he said no. He kept an eye on them after that, because anybody who tried to run the country was a threat to the family interests, and nothing was more important to Grandfather. I think the reason she wanted to meet you—the reason she dropped Milton's name—was that our friendship worried her. Erebeth thought you were being groomed as a member of the Palace Council.”

“Me!”

He nodded. “Erebeth thought so, and, frankly, Eddie, I think it's possible.” He waved a hand. “Spare me your indignation. People are getting killed out there, but, somehow, you miraculously survive. Mr. Collier leaves you alive? With all of Southeast Asia to play around in? It beggars belief, Eddie.” He subsided. They were headed back toward shore. “I know why you came, Eddie. I keep tabs on you. You want me to send somebody to protect Aurelia, right? It's already taken care of. She has a couple of shadows watching her every move.”

“Streisand and Sharif.”

Gary smiled. “Is that what she calls them? Well, they're good. Not as good as Mr. Collier, but still very good.”

“But they're not just there to watch her, are they? You're watching Aurelia because you're afraid to watch me.” A moment as they pulled the boat out of the water. “You're afraid I'm a member of the Palace Council, and I might have a couple of watchers of my own.”

“Something like that.”

Eddie declined Gary's invitation to stay for lunch. In the driveway, they nevertheless shook hands.

“Were we ever friends?” Eddie asked.

“We'll always be friends, Eddie.”

“Even if we don't trust each other?”

“That's not such a terrible thing in a friendship.”

Eddie continued on to Washington, still searching, but searching alone.