The Shadow Cabinet (58 page)

“So it is,” Nick agreed sadly, “but the diplomatic record speaks for itself. Golda Meir expressed it best. The Arabs now had oil, and in such a world Israel's cause could no longer be a just one. But she wasn't talking just of the Arab oil embargo. She was talking of the world she'd seen emerge since 1967, the world of geopolitical and strategic advantage, the world of power without principle. The same world the Pentagon was considering when it stalled on the military resupply to Israel during the first week of the war because of its fears of Arab reaction. The same world Nixon was thinking of when he sent his secret letter to Brezhnev on October 20, proposing that the U.S. and the Soviet Union seize the opportunity to impose a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. Brezhnev had made a similar suggestion at San Clemente the previous June, but it had been rejected. Nixon was weaker now, weakened by the problem with the tapes. A desperate man, hearing rumors of impeachment, hoping to salvage his presidency.” He looked at the lawyer. “The day of the massacre, the ‘Saturday Night Massacre.' Probably you remember?” He saw nothing in the man's eyes. “In Moscow the following day,” he resumed, “Kissinger agreed to the cease-fire without consulting the Israelis, despite his assurances Israel would have time to consolidate its military gains. Mrs. Meir felt betrayed. She suspected Nixon and Kissinger had concluded a secret agreement to reimpose the 1967 borders.” He shrugged, depressed by the recollection. “What could she think? Israel would once more be asked to pay the price of an Arab military defeat. All she'd asked for was justice, for Israel's right to exist. With the Arab oil weapon, the Europeans could no longer be counted upon, not the Japanese, not the third world. Now Kissinger's expedient realpolitik seemed an unreliable arbiter of what served Israel's interests. The tide was running out—”

“Brezhnev threatened to intervene in the Middle East,” Gawpin intruded boisterously, shoulders thrust forward. “Threatened to send Russian soldiers to Egypt. We went to the brink over that and the Sovs backed down.”

Nick nodded in recollection. “I remember, yes. On October 24, Brezhnev sent a letter to Nixon asking that the U.S. join in sending Russian and American troops to Egypt under U.N. auspices to enforce the cease-fire. It was Kissinger who described the letter as an ultimatum.”

“I don't remember that,” Gawpin said.

“The letter arrived shortly after Kissinger had a shouting match with the Israeli ambassador in Washington. He told him the U.S. would never go to war because of Israeli violations of the cease-fire. A blustering match, I should say.”

“I don't remember that, either,” Gawpin grumbled.

“Nixon was sleeping when Kissinger chaired the meeting in the White House situation room to consider the U.S. response. He wasn't wakened. More of Kissinger's bluster, this time leaked to the press.”

“I don't see your point,” the brigadier said.

“My point is that this incident wasn't another Cuban missile crisis,” Nick said, “despite the mythology that's grown up around it.”

“I suppose we have to take your word for that,” the lawyer declared.

“It doesn't matter. The diplomatic record speaks for itself. How others interpret it is something different, and that's what interests me. For many people, the experience of the Yom Kippur War and the withdrawal from Vietnam raised doubts not only about détente but about the credibility of any U.S. military commitment abroad.”

“Obviously,” Gawpin pointed out, extinguishing his cigar in the metal urn in front of his chair. “What the hell'd you expect?” He glanced at his wristwatch.

“For them,” Nick concluded, “détente meant that the U.S. would ultimately be confined to the Western Hemisphere. That's where détente would end. No longer would the American public, exhausted by Vietnam, support the projection of U.S. power overseas. For people with global causes, it wasn't enough, just as a nuclear deterrent that was purely defensive in nature, protecting the continental U.S., wasn't enough. Not for people like the general here, not like Les Fine. Both are evangelists, each for his own reasons.”

“By ‘global causes,' he's talking about U.S. vital interests,” Gawpin said, winking again at the brigadier.

The lawyer, restlessly consulting his own watch, nodded in mute agreement.

“And that's what's behind this rhetorical terrorism, all this demonology about what Moscow intends,” Nick continued. He no longer had their attention. Even Les Fine was pulling his coat from the adjacent table, preparing to leave. “These are the slogans of the popular front,” he continued hopelessly, “that's all. Just like the thirties, the forties. The tragic thing is, this hysteria is so falsifying the historical record that we no longer seem to understand the world we live in.”

The lawyer was closing his notebook as Nick droned on. Les Fine had risen to silently cross the room. As the door shut firmly behind him, Nick felt like a man being abandoned in an empty room with only his own voice to console him. It was Les Fine he'd been appealing to all that time, and now he had nothing more to say.

“We appreciate your directness,” the lawyer declared as he returned his pen to his coat pocket. “It's been useful.”

“Very helpful,” Gawpin agreed, rising stiffly.

The brigadier stood up and manfully offered Nick his hand. “I like a man who sticks to what he believes, right or wrong,” he said, looking Nick straight in the eye. His grip was like iron.

If the brigadier, the lawyer, and General Gawpin admired candor, Nick thought, shaking hands all around, it was only because nothing he had said had made the slightest impression on any of them. He was just a weepy-eyed, slightly dotty humanitarian, agonizing over genocidal questions the past had since disposed of, locked behind history's closed door.

Nick found Les Fine standing on the top step of the mall entrance, waiting for his car, eyes lifted out over the snowy parking lot. Nick stopped as he pulled on his gloves, trying to think of something to say. Fine turned finally, glanced at him, and looked away. In that instant of recognition, the dark eyes that had so often troubled him these recent weeks, filled with the anger and humiliation of decades of helplessness, seemed remarkably calm.

“You're badly deceived,” Fine said, looking away. “I had nothing to do with your removal from these various posts. You torment yourself.”

“That's possible,” Nick muttered in embarrassment.

“These obsessions you spoke of are yours, not mine. You have a persecution complex.”

“My brother-in-law tells me the same thing.”

Fine turned to look at him disapprovingly. “Who is this scapegoat brother-in-law you keep mentioning?”

“He is me, under the skin, just as you are me, under the skin,” Nick said, but the humorless, reproving face disappointed him. “He is a lawyer in Chicago,” he continued sadly, regretting his whimsy. “An important lawyer with Washington connections. You talked to him once.”

“I did?”

“When you were lobbying for SALT I. You met with a group from Chicago, some very important fund-raisers. This was during the Yom Kippur War in October 1973. You tried to get them to oppose the Jackson Amendment to help speed up the weapons transfers the Pentagon was stalling on.”

“Was I successful?”

“No, I'm sorry to say.”

Fine seemed to smile. “Good. It was blood blackmail. A shrewd man, your brother-in-law. You should listen to him these days.” The car arrived and Fine went down the steps.

“Shrewd, maybe,” Nick called after him indignantly, “but even he wouldn't believe all these lies you're telling.”

But Les Fine only waved without turning.

10.

Rita and Artie Kramer had planned on driving to Annapolis that Saturday morning for the weekend, but he'd been called away late in the morning by Nat Strykker. Reluctant to go out because Artie might return, she waited alone in the suite, a restless, angry prisoner in quarters she'd grown to despise. The afternoon dragged on. She watched the snow flurries dim into invisibility and the streetlamps come on, ragged moons of milkweed through the cluttered air. The rooms were silent—no radio, no television, nothing at all.

You selfish bastard
, she raged, a little after five o'clock, as the darkness was almost complete beyond the windows. Her bag was packed and waiting near the bedroom door.

She'd gone into the kitchenette to refill her glass when she heard the door open, and she quickly returned to the front room. Kramer came in, his face gray with fatigue, his tie loosened, his coat hanging open. Chuckie Savant was at his heels.

“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded.

“I'll be the laughingstock,” he mumbled. “The whole town. You, me, all of us.” He dropped his coat and hat on the chair and staggered across the rug to collapse on the couch. “That's the last straw, I'm telling you—never again. Get me something cold to drink.”

“Get it yourself,” she said coolly. “Where's he been, Chuckie?”

“With Nat Strykker and his lawyers. Nat's in real trouble. The government got his money back.”

“What money?”

“The money Morris got to try to buy the government case. Now Morris is in protective custody and he's squealing his head off.”

“About what?” she asked.

“About a lot of things. Don't take it so hard, Artie,” he said to Kramer. “It's got nothing to do with you.”

“Nothing to do with me!” Artie cried. “It's my company you're talking about! A criminal indictment! That's ten to twelve years they're gonna hang on Strykker.”

“Don't kid, Artie,” Rita said. “I'm not in the mood.”

“Who's kidding? Get me something to drink.”

“What's he talking about, Chuckie?”

“Bribery,” Artie said. “Bribery and corruption, maybe labor rackeeterring. Churning some accounts. Overbillings on government contracts, maybe five, six million worth. That's what I'm talking about.”

“When did you find this out?”

“Today with Strykker's lawyer, they were sweating it out of him,” Chuckie said, still standing with Rita near the couch where Artie had sprawled. “He was in real deep, Nat was. Didn't know which way to go, what the government was going to hit him with. That's why him and Morris tried to buy the government case—”

“He shoulda let Rathbone handle it,” Artie said. “Pete Rathbone was gonna take care of all that trouble. He would have taken care of everything.…”

“You knew about this?” Rita asked, surprised.

“I knew Strykker had some kinda big trouble, I didn't know what.”

“The lawyers said these overbillings would just be a civil suit,” Chuckie Savant offered. “Something they could work out a settlement on, an out-of-court settlement—”

“Shut up! I don't wanna hear. I've got a migraine. Oh, man, have I ever got a migraine.” He shut his eyes, leaning back against the couch.

“Did you hear all this?” Rita asked Chuckie.

“Not all of it. Nat's taking it real bad, all broken up.”

“He should be.”

“It's crazy what they done!” Artie shouted, opening his eyes.

“Just take it easy,” Rita said calmly. “I'll fix you something.”

“On account of this, the goddamn government is whipping up a curse on all of us!”

“Shhhh. Talk to him, Chuckie,” she urged, turning toward the kitchen.

“Listen,” Chuckie began softly, “listen, Artie—”

“Shut up! I'll have the goddamn IRS in my pajamas for the next ten years. You too!” he called after Rita. “Every time you open up a closet out in L.A., ten guys fall out! I come here because I'm patriotic. I didn't come here to have these dumdums do a number on me!” He looked back at Chuckie Savant. “Call the house in L.A., go ahead, call 'em. Ask the housekeeper who's been hanging around, has she seen anyone suspicious. Go on.”

He collapsed back against the couch and shut his eyes. Rita returned with a drink and put it in his hand. “It's going to be all right,” she said. “whatever Strykker did, it didn't have anything to do with you. So just take it easy.”

His head was still back. He said, “It's a sad day for Uncle Sam when Artie Kramer has to go back to L.A. with his tail between his legs.”

“Go back to L.A.? How come?”

“You don't understand because you don't know what it was about. Pete Rathbone told Strykker to take it easy and he got nervous. If I'd known all he'd been doing, I'd be nervous too.” He lifted his head to look at her, as if he'd just remembered something reassuring. “One thing I'll say about L.A. At least you know what kind of schlemiels you're working with.”

“So why do you have to go back to L.A.?”

“Don't be stupid. How's it gonna look, the White House makes the announcement about the political appointment, this big stockholder in Caltronics, Artie Kramer, and right there next to it is Strykker's picture, the Caltronics biggie, and how he and his company are getting indicted on criminal charges back on the West Coast. I didn't come here to be any embarrassment. That's what the lawyer said too.”

Chuckie Savant came back. “The only one she's seen is the Gonzales lawn crew that came yesterday.”

Kramer sat up alertly. “How many was there?”

“She didn't say. Probably two, like usual.”

“Three,” Artie said quickly. “And I'll bet he wasn't no Mex, either. Call her back.”

“So it's all decided about going back?” Rita asked.

“I'll tell the White House on Monday,” Artie said, watching Chuckie Savant return to the bedroom.

“I don't understand why Strykker and this other man tried to buy the government case,” she said after a minute. “I mean, what good would that have done? If they had something on him, they still would have come after him, wouldn't they?”