The Henderson Equation (31 page)

"That was some quick hop over the land," Nick
said, feeling the warm pump of his hand.

"I took the first plane," Phelps replied.

Nick looked at the half-eaten pizza, felt a fleeting pang
of hunger, then revulsion, as he reached for a beer instead. Sitting down on an
upholstered chair, he put his feet up on the cocktail table and stole a glance
at Martha's nipples pressing arrogantly against the big ears of Mickey Mouse.

"We've been busy people today, Mr. Gold," she
said, her seriousness incongruous with her dress. He could detect the intensity
of their newspaperman's curiosity, the impending excitement of revelations to
come.

"It's like playing hot potato, Mr. Gold,"
Gunderstein said. "We've been passing it around among each other. Finally
it got so hot we had to put it down until you got here."

"Stop the hard sell, Harold," Nick snapped.
"It doesn't become you." He drank his beer, swallowing deeply. He
caught a glimpse of Martha looking fearfully at him, as if his presence were an
intrusion, intimidating.

"Robert has been most helpful, Mr. Gold,"
Gunderstein said calmly, oblivious to Nick's outburst.

"Let Robert tell it, Harold," Martha said.
Gunderstein nodded, picking at his pimples. Nick watched as Phelps paced the
room, smoke pouring from his mouth and nose, then he stopped and removed his
pipe.

"It wasn't meant to be bottled up this long," he
began. "You can't imagine how debilitating it is to keep these so-called
secrets." He paused to be sure he was commanding attention. "Covering
South Viet Nam in those days was like covering any third-world country. You had
to know where the CIA bodies were buried or you simply wouldn't be able to
interpret events. You see, it's the CIA that really carries the ball out in the
boonies. The straight diplomats are merely pawns in the game. The real power is
held by the CIA, deriving it directly from the President. Actually it's no
mystery. I'm sure you've all read the Pentagon Papers which describe in detail
events concerning Diem's downfall. They're very accurate--up to a point. The
CIA was, we know, the conduit between the generals who effected the coup and
the President who engineered it. Actually, they were quite efficient. The Ngu
brothers were boxed in before they knew it and it was all over quickly, almost
a routine CIA activity."

"You knew all this at the time?" Nick asked.

"Of course."

"If I recall, it wasn't even implied in your
stories."

"Even if I wrote what I knew we wouldn't have printed
it."

"Why not?"

"Because Pell had given Kennedy his word."

Nick felt himself grow tense. Why had he not known?

"How did you know?"

"He called me and told me. It was as simple as
that."

"The overseas lines were tapped. Charlie wouldn't have
been that stupid."

"He was cryptic. I knew what he meant. I'll never
forget the way he put it. He said the company had asked that I omit the golf
balls from my next shipment. I knew exactly what he meant. So I filed the
acceptable version of what I knew as a bunch of bullshit."

"It never troubled you?" Nick asked calmly. He
had begun to reach back into time, remembering Charlie during those last
Kennedy months.

"Trouble me? Hell, I ate my heart out about it. But
what was I to do? What would you do? I wasn't prepared to blow my job."

Nick listened, contempt building inside of him, not only
for Phelps, but for himself. "And you sat on it for all those years?"

"What was the point? Besides, it was over, squirreled
away. You'd be surprised how efficient the human mind is in
rationalization."

"And why now?"

"Because you're asking. You really want it." He
paused. "How hard was I expected to fight?" he said quietly. "I
had gotten the word. I knew the ground rules."

He looked into Nick's face.

"It's safe now," he continued. "For people
like me, that is. Safe."

Phelps watched Nick's face for a reaction. When none came,
he proceeded. "Hell, we all felt we were instruments of American policy in
those days, regardless of how it went against our newspaperman's morality. All
that First Amendment stuff gets pretty gooey when they start leaning on you like
that. Besides, I was a Depression baby. I had two kids." He relit his pipe
and puffed deeply, revealing his agitation.

"But the Pentagon Papers made no reference to the
assassination of Diem as a CIA intrigue. It said that the deed was perpetrated
by old enemies, old rivals."

"Yes, I read it. It simply didn't go far enough."

"Why?"

"Because the evidence wasn't conclusive. There were no
documents showing that Diem's assassination was engineered by the CIA."

"Back to square one," Nick said, finishing his beer.
He felt his belly bloat.

"Not quite. Even back then, I was convinced that
Henderson was the man personally sent to prepare the logistics for the
assassination."

"Supposition," Nick said, goading him.

"The scenario went something like this. Henderson was
an NSA man. He had been responsible for setting up the original South
Vietnamese coding when he was in the army after World War II. That was his
basic expertise, that and the language. He was literally one of the handful of
men in the States who knew the language. He was deliberately sent across to
manipulate the assassination. I saw him only once. He steered clear of the
embassy, but since I knew what seemed to be afoot I kept my eyes on the CIA
man. I followed him everywhere, a shadow."

"Deduction, Robert. That's all. Not proof."

"I remember Allison. He was actually merely a
go-between, a courier. He was the one who brought the message of how Diem was
to be transported to his enemies. Henderson was the one who set him up."

"That's what Allison told us," Nick said.
"The ravings of a drunk. Besides, he won't let himself be quoted."

"Quote me, then," Phelps said. "I'll be
glad, in fact, to put my by-line on it. Let them deny it."

"If he gets up front on it, so will Allison,"
Gunderstein said. "I'm convinced of that."

"Look, Nick," Phelps continued, "the way
those birds operated they always built in what they call plausible denial. He
really can't deny he was there. He can't deny he was with NSA. He can't deny
his intelligence connections and once the ball is in the air, others will step
forward."

"And that will be the end of Henderson's carefully
built political career, the end of his dream of the presidency."

"So what?" Phelps said. "What kind of
twisted morality could let a guy like that become President of the United
States? In a pig's ass, I say."

"Don't invoke morality, Phelps. Not now."

"I'd like to make amends. It's Christian, you know.
Black sheep and all that. I was never in a position to argue the point. I had
no choice. Like the Germans, I obeyed orders."

"We've suddenly become a bunch of self-righteous
purists," Nick said lamely. Surely, in the light of more than a decade
ago, it could not have seemed to Charlie a betrayal of principle. But why had
he not told him? Could he have been ashamed?

"And the Bay of Pigs?" It came out as a cryptic
retch.

"Pell knew about that, too. That's the way they
censor, Nick. We both know that. They con you by letting you in on the inside.
You feel important, in the know. Then you lie for the bastards."

"For America," Nick said. His throat felt dry. He
reached for another beer.

"Bullshit," Phelps said.

"We've got to have legitimate secrets."

"That's what got us into all this trouble. You can't
run morality on two tracks."

Nick could feel Martha Gates unwinding, the sense of her
presence rising in the room as her body moved, her breasts jiggling in the
warmth of her tight T-shirt. He knew, as he might have believed in his younger
days, that it was the idea of morality, the very fiber of good motives, that
was making her move, had made her move toward this idea of what journalism
meant. She was still young enough not to have drunk too deeply of futility; a
part of her innocence was still intact. He felt it odd that this silent
youthful figure should suddenly dominate the room, making him somehow ashamed.
He felt his eyes magnetize toward her, forcing her to respond.

"It's wrong," she said simply. "Soon you
won't be able to tell the difference between the idea you're protecting and the
idea you're against."

He felt admiration for her special sense of purity and the
private inner glow of her conviction. Of course, in the abstract, she was
correct, given that all humankind were saints. Yet it was insufferable of these
young people to condemn the motives and instincts of others in another time,
another environment. Nick felt a sudden need to defend Henderson or, at the
very least, to give him a chance. He owed that to his conscience. As for
Phelps, his contrition, his need for salvation, didn't become his age.

"You're making judgments years after the fact,
distorting the motives. Let's face it, a few years ago the world looked a hell
of a lot different. We had just learned what Stalin had done to millions of
people. It reinforced our fear of what those people were capable of doing to
us. They had built the Berlin Wall. There was a Geneva Treaty to protect.
People believed in our word. You could justify such activities. Diem was known
to be corrupt. We hadn't yet sent many boys to Viet Nam. Look at it from
Kennedy's point of view. The Geneva Treaty was made between governments. Was it
our fault that their leadership was sick? It wasn't as simple as divorce. There
could be no divorce. We had signed for life, or so we thought."

He felt energized by his argument, wondering about his conviction.
The human mind, he thought, could rationalize almost anything.

"It's not his motives that we're questioning,"
Gunderstein said, trying to refocus their concentration. "That's not our
business. Only the story."

"It's an apologia," Phelps said contemptuously.
"It was wrong then. It's wrong now."

"I agree," Martha said, obviously finding courage
in the alliance with Phelps.

"The point is that it has story value,"
Gunderstein said, his pimples reddening, revealing an uncommon display of
emotion that his flat, matter-of-fact way of speaking concealed. "Our only
concern must be his involvement. Was Henderson involved in an official attempt
at assassination? It's not a question of our right to tell the story, or even
make moral judgments on it. The question is: is the story correct, accurate to
the best of our knowledge?"

"It's still too circumstantial," Nick persisted.

"We're not a court of law," Gunderstein said.
"Responsible allegations are worth printing. You didn't push for that kind
of proof when we went after the President."

He had said the words without passion, but their
implications seemed an accusation.

"The man has denied the allegation," Nick said
hoarsely. "To my face."

"And do you believe him, Nick?" Phelps asked.

He hesitated, not wanting to see his own malice.
"No," he admitted, daring not to dissimulate in this group, but
adding quickly, "purely a gut reaction and, as we all know, that's no way
to run a railroad."

"You're splitting hairs, Nick," Phelps said,
relighting his pipe.

"There are other factors to consider," Nick said.
He felt the beginnings of compulsiveness. His fatigue was beginning to betray
him. What could they know of the isolation of command? If he bent over backward
any more, he'd lose himself up his own asshole.

"Like what?" Gunderstein asked.

"Like the destruction of a man's political
career," Nick said.

"I've heard that before," Phelps said. "It
sounds to me as if you want to protect him." Nick watched Phelps' eyes
move toward Martha's. She nodded assent, reinforcing his courage. "It's
almost as if we were as bad as they are, protecting our constituency, being
selectively self-righteous." Phelps' neck muscles visibly tightened. Nick
hoped he wouldn't choose this moment to make a stand. Not now!

"I had hoped that you'd be more perceptive,
Robert," Nick said gently, trying to head him off.

"If I'm overreacting, Nick," Phelps said,
"forgive me. That comes from eating one's heart out all those years."

"It doesn't necessarily follow that you'll be
destroying the man's career," Gunderstein said, taking a new tack.
"Not that it should be any of our business. He can make a defense. We're
not all that omnipotent. After all, we're digging back a few years. He's a
pretty resourceful guy."

"He'll pursue a strategy of denial," Phelps interjected.
"But I agree with Nick. It will make him suspect before his basic
constituency. It will haunt him."

"I suppose," Gunderstein conceded. "But if
we thought in those terms we would print nothing but social events, sports, and
the comics."

"You'll have to forgive my humanity, guys," Nick
exploded sarcastically. He reached for another beer, pulled off the tab, and
drank greedily.

"Case in point: Mrs. Henderson was in to see me
today," Nick said, watching their reaction.

"I expected that, Mr. Gold," Martha said. "I
pressed her very hard."

"So she tells me."

"Poor thing," Martha Gates said. "She became
very incensed with me, very indignant."

"They're good at that," Phelps said. "Hiding
behind their indignation."

"A futile act by a futile woman," Nick said.

He wondered if he should tell them more. Then he felt his
tiredness return, his energy flatten.

"Shall we write the story, Mr. Gold?" Gunderstein
persisted.

"I'll let you know tomorrow," Nick said. He was
too exhausted for decisions.

Watching Martha Gates, he remembered Jennie again, his
anxieties returning, loneliness descending. He stood up, feeling a rush of
dizziness at the sudden rising.