The Henderson Equation (6 page)

"Nick," Henderson said, holding out his
politician's hand, the flesh firm with ingratiation. Nick felt its strong,
tightening grip. They had met on numerous occasions, especially in the days
when Nick circulated more freely in the years after Margaret, the time before
Jennie.

"Where the hell have you been hiding?"

"In my glass cage, where else?" He watched Myra exhibit a tiny frown. He should make an effort to hide his pique, he cautioned
himself.

"Burt called this morning. He had something he wanted
to discuss," Myra said. Henderson lifted his glass, skimming off a sliver
of the surface. A maid came quietly into the room with practiced
unobtrusiveness and placed a martini over rocks in front of Nick. As he looked
into its glistening viscosity, his caution heightened. Not that placing the
accustomed drink was unusual. Was it the absence of an eye signal from Myra, the flicker of a lid, or, perhaps, the trifle too swift delivery? His fingers closed
around the coolness of the glass.

"Always willing to hear from Burt," he said. He
could feel Henderson gathering his force, the assimilating of all he knew about
Nick. It was the traditional way the powerful approached the more powerful,
measuring the thickness of the ice before each cautious step. With men like Henderson, who exuded practiced media charm, Nick imagined he could see the gears mesh,
the mask reassemble like electronic markings on a computer console.

"He was telling me the joke about the one-eyed
man," Myra said, her grey hair a trifle bluish in the brightness, or was
it the blue dominance of Henderson's eyes, which peered out, flaunting this
gift of genetic mutation?

"As the fellow said to the one-eyed man"--Henderson lifted a finger--"Eye..." Nick granted him a small laugh, he hoped politely.
Henderson stepped out of the shadow to the sun-washed table and sat down
before the iced silver fruit cup.

"This thing with India is getting ominous," he
said, switching easily to a more serious note. "Christ, if India begins to blow it will be an absolute horror."

"All those people," Myra mused, her voice
trailing off.

"We'll be assailed by our usual helplessness and our
sense of guilt about it. If anything was inevitable in this world, it was an
Indian eruption. The pressure cooker was taking too much pressure," Henderson said in his most impressive senatorial invocation.

"What would you do?" Nick said, his journalist's
mind prodding the question. Henderson raised his blue eyes, aggressively
secure.

"Not one damned thing," he said. "For once,
just once, I would embark on a program of belligerent non-involvement. India is a quagmire to beat all quagmires, a self-righteous leadership fostering a policy,
a deliberate policy, of impoverishment as a form of population control."

"Everything else seems to have failed," Myra said. "Fertility is choking them to death." Nick watched Henderson's mask
assemble into deep concentration as Myra spoke. Surely he was fawning, using
the weapons of his male arsenal. Couldn't Myra see the transparency? He
wondered vaguely if he was the only one in the city, in the world, who could
really see the sham, the bare bones beneath the transparent skin.

They picked at their fruit cup. He imagined Myra's eyes had locked briefly into Henderson's. Nick's antenna bristled with reception.
There is a conspiratorial stink here, he told himself.

"Burt has alluded to something we're working on,"
Myra began, patting her lips with the yellow napkin. It seemed a signal to
begin.

"Oh?" Nick said innocently. He was determined to
remain close-lipped. It was not unusual for him to receive appeals. Hell, it
was a way of life in this business. Over the years he had developed stock
answers, such as "Facts are immutable."

"Nick calls the shots," had always been Myra's stock response when confronted by appeals. "We have an agreement." But
this was different. And Nick felt it.

"It's this CIA thing, Nick," Henderson began,
hurling himself over the gulf of small talk. He paused. Nick caught his flash
of panic, quickly doused. The expected response not forthcoming, Henderson was forced to continue.

"Gunderstein is on my back like a leech. He calls. I
deny the implication. He calls again. He calls everybody. This has been going
on for weeks. At the receiving end it's like a persecution, a terrible
harassment, like a fellow sitting under the guillotine, waiting for the blade
to fall."

Nick watched as he spoke, sensing the discomfort. He had
seen it many times before. He felt Myra's deliberate avoidance of his eyes.

"Either run the story, or get off my back," Henderson said. Surely he had wanted to say: Shit or get off the pot.

"You know the Jews didn't kill Christ, they worried
him to death," Henderson said. Nick pushed aside the offensively heavy
hand of ingratiation. Didn't Henderson know the allusion only made matters
worse?

"I never suspected that you saw yourself in that
role," Nick said. Myra looked down into the poached fish that the maid was
putting in front of her.

"These confrontations are always difficult, especially
from this end," Henderson mumbled. He was right, of course. Nick softened.
The real issue wasn't Henderson at all.

"I know, Burt. The story hasn't run because I have not
been satisfied. It's a one-source story. The pattern is familiar. A subject
grips the public imagination. This year it's the CIA, the spook business. One
thing leads to another. We carried the story of those assassination teams, set
up through CIA, that supposedly rubbed out foreign officials in the sixties. We
hedged on it carefully, despite a leaking sieve within the agency. Then comes
the second wave, the confessions, the compulsion of bottled-up guilt. Now the
lights are on and the clothes off; it's open season on confession. And when
you've got a star bloodhound like Gunderstein, he follows all the scents. He's
got a source. He's tracking down another. The source tells him you were
involved when you were in the army..."

"Involved in what? Specifically what?"

"In the assassination of Diem."

Henderson shook his head and
sighed. He directed the focus of his controlled rage at Myra.

"You see," he said, "it's positively
defamation, irresponsible. I deny it categorically. It is a patent attempt to
destroy my political career. And I resent it." He was emphatic but in full
control. Only a slight flush beneath the winter tan revealed the obvious
internal turmoil.

"The man's name is Carter Allison." Nick searched
Henderson's face for a clue. Nothing stirred to embellish the hint.

"I never heard of the man. Nick, it's like the
McCarthy era. How far does the press have to go to flex its muscles? Really,
Nick."

Myra remained silent, her eyes
still on her plate as she picked at her lunch.

"I told you, Burt, I would not run the story
until"--he checked himself--"unless it's confirmed by another
unimpeachable source."

"Damn it, Nick. Take my word for it."

"Your word?"

"I think my word has credibility. Have you lost all
faith?"

"In the word of politicians? Is that the question
you're asking?"

"No, Nick. My word."

"You know what you're asking?" A danger signal
had gone up in Nick's head. He was clever, this Henderson. He was prodding him
to confess a bias, to articulate it in front of Myra with him as witness. He
saw the looming trap and side-stepped.

"Of course."

"I always start out disbelieving news leads. It's a
habit of newspapering," Nick said, amused at the irony. "But I have
been known to be disappointed."

"What the press will do finally is to run off
everybody with political aspirations. Who the hell wants to submit to your
magnifications? You start off with the built-in bias that every politician's
heart is overflowng with mendacity." Somehow, now that he had
side-stepped, the admonition had lost its sting. "And you proceed from
there. In my case, I am a victim, a speared fish, thrashing about on your
point." He raised his blue eyes to Nick, the sun glistening from their
surface.

"There's got to be some compassion. I'm asking for
mercy, man."

"If I thought in those terms," Nick said,
"I'd go nuts." He looked quickly at Myra, the allusion to insanity
both involuntary and indelicate. Myra had raised her eyes and looked at him
impassively. It was a three-cornered conversation between faces on cards, the
queen of spades talking to the king of clubs and the jack of diamonds. Did they
see him as he saw himself, the jack? Jackass might be better. Did they think he
could not smell the conspiracy?

"Either print it or be done with it," Henderson said. "I don't want to live in the shadow of the knife." It was, of
course, a display of bravado, macho. Nick could see the shiny colonel's eagle,
the glistening boots, the blue glaze under the helmet liner. A flash of memory
of his army days intruded. "Now that is a leader of men," Charlie had
sneered at their battalion commander, square-featured and confident, with the
Arrow-shirt look of that era.

"Nothing is that clear-cut, Burt," Nick
responded.

"It is to me."

"Only an irresponsible newspaper would already have
printed the story."

"And it would be libelous," Henderson snapped.

"Would it?"

Henderson squirmed visibly. Was he
getting at last to the soft underbelly?

"Or filled with half-truths."

"Like what?"

"Like I was recalled by the National Security Agency
for a brief time in 1963. That's on the record. I have a certain expertise in
intelligence data. I was with Marshall in the Chiang-Mao negotiations. Hell, I
was just a kid. And I was on MacArthur's staff in Korea. Let's face it. I'm
vulnerable. I was, in a sense, a spook. It's quite in vogue now to knock such
an involvement and that alone would murder me with my constituency."

"It would hurt. I'll grant you that," Nick said.

"But I was
not
mixed up in any assassination
teams. Whatever the hell they were. Believe me, Nick. That's pure fantasy.
Rubbish. Take my word for it."

There it was again, Nick thought.

"Allison told Gunderstein you played a significant
part in the whole Diem action."

"He's a goddamned liar. Whoever he is. Bring him here.
Let him confront me." Henderson isn't really the issue at all, Nick
reminded himself as he watched Myra light a cigarette and blow smoke out of
both nostrils. He reached into the silver cigarette dish, slid out a
long-filtered brand, lit it, and inhaled deeply. Henderson's pain seemed
distant. Was this Myra's handpicked man? Would the little list have all the
other names crossed out? What did Myra believe? Was this Henderson's test or
his own?

"Believe
me,
Burt," Nick said, "I
don't take the matter lightly."

"I know that, Nick," Henderson pressed,
"that's why I thought I'd take this direct route. I'd have a tough time
getting up from the mat even if you hedged the story. You acknowledge that in
today's climate it would hurt me badly. In political terms, it would kill me
with the kids, a whole generation of kids who came of age in the middle
sixties. You see, I too take my responsibilities seriously."

"I'm quite aware of that, Burt. I'm also very much
aware of your presidential aspirations." He looked at Myra.

"I've made no bones about it. I'm not ashamed of my
ambition."

"I never met a politician who was." He wished he
had checked that, the implied cynicism was, in its way, an admission of bias.
Were they outfoxing him? A maid cleared the table in silence then brought a
carafe of hot coffee. They remained silent as she poured. It was revealing to
see their distrust even of supposedly "safe" retainers. Surely the
maid had silently absorbed conversations like this before. Would she one day
write her own book, Nick thought, her own revelation of power from another
vantage, through another lens? "But I heard them say it," she might
say to a book editor. "I was there. They thought I was merely a picture on
the wall."

"This isn't easy for me, Nick," Henderson said,
when the maid had gone. "Call off Gunderstein. Take me on faith. This one
time. Christ, man," he looked at Myra, "I'm on your side."

It was, of course, ideologically accurate. He wanted to
shout: "You're not the issue!" Myra was eloquent in her silence.

"It's not as simple as all that," Nick said.
"There are ecological problems."

Henderson seemed confused. Power is
power, he must be thinking. Nick preempted the expected response.

"I've got to let Gunderstein play it out. If there's
no truth in it, he'll come up against a blank wall and that will be the end of
it."

"There is no truth in it, Nick. I swear it."

"You've got to be a newspaperman to understand."

"You make it sound like there's some special mystique
about it.

"There is."

"But, Nick, I'm vulnerable. I have enemies, especially
at the right end of the political spectrum. They want my ass. They'll pay for
confirmation, if necessary. Put out the right bait and they'll find a fish for
the hook."

"Gunderstein will see through it."

"I'd hate to stake my career on a newspaperman's
ambition." It was Henderson's bias now. For the first time since he had
come into the room, Nick felt the raw power of his own position.

"This time you'll have to trust
me,
Burt.
You'll have to have faith in my instincts."

"I never said I didn't." Henderson was defending
now.

"He's right, Burt," Myra said suddenly. He had
flushed her out. She was telling him not to press.

"He lives by story values," Henderson said. It
was a mild protest. "I live by image. That's not necessarily
compatible."

"That's the name of the game," Nick went on.
"We're not only the victimizer. Sometimes we're also the victim."