Wag the Dog (34 page)

“I thought you shredded the Memo.”

“I found it. It was all at the same time, coincidental timing, when Hartman met me in Orange County.”

“You had the Memo? You didn't shred the Memo?”

“It was right there in my pocket.”

“How did it get in your pocket?”

“One of the secretaries found it in my briefcase.”

“How did it get in your briefcase?”

“I like it, Jimbo. You know what I feel like? Maverick, Burt Maverick. There's a big pot on the table, and I'm opening my cards, real close to my chest and I look real cool, because it doesn't matter what's in my hand, I got an ace up my sleeve.”

Baker didn't tell him the TV characters had been Bret and Bart Maverick. He said, “So you met Hartman and gave him the Memo.”

“And he put it in development. You know what development is?”

“I know. Who's paying Beagle? Is anyone paying Beagle? Who else knows about this? How many people are in the loop?”

“That's the beauty of it. No one. Except Hartman and me and Beagle and now you. But you always were, sort of.”

“Beagle knows?”

“Well, how can he direct a war if he doesn't know he's directing a war? I couldn't. Could you?”

“So they're doing it for nothing?”

“No. Very clever. Hartman, he arranged it all. Jews are like that, with arrangements. Musashi is paying for it. But they don't know it.”

“That's terrific,” Baker said, trying to find a way not to sound too, too interrogatory. “How did he arrange that?”

“You see, there's overhead and salaries. That's what business is about. It creates jobs. Staff and such. And living in L.A. You know the cost of living there is very high. So he just let Musashi know that if they underwrote a development deal with Beagle that the president, that's me, would be very grateful. I'm grateful enough that I'll listen to one guy for seven minutes. I'm reasonably grateful. I am.”

“They didn't want to know why you would be grateful that they give a Hollywood picture-show director a couple of million bucks? I'm guessing it's a couple of million—everything out there is a couple of million.”

“I don't actually know the actual amounts. It was all that was necessary.”

“And this Hollywood agent and this Hollywood picture-show director, they're not talking this up at parties or with their girlfriends to impress them or whatever?” Baker asked, masking a rising sense of panic.

“You're concerned about security?”

“Well, some,” Baker said. He wished he were afraid of flying. That would have meant that the feeling in his stomach was that he was in a tubular aluminum coffin twenty-two thousand feet in the air, not that Bush had started something that was going to be a combination of Watergate and Jimmy Carter
being attacked by a rabbit. L.A.! Movie directors planning the next war! This thing had bimbo and bimbo leak written all over it. What the hell was going on? Did Hartman arrange some nubile thing to give George genuine Hollywood-style blow jobs, leaving him disoriented and deranged? Baker had seen what happened to aging men, especially WASPs, when they discovered oral sex.

“We have total security. Surrounding the clock. Wiretaps, everything.”

“CIA?” Baker asked. There was that acid feeling, creeping up his throat In a moment he was going to taste it at the back of his mouth. He knew it. Some fucking liberal-leftist Democrat congressman or senator would get some scared-shitless, piss-in-his-pants wimp from the Agency under oath and he would blab all the secrets all over the press. It had happened before; it would happen again.

“No,” Bush said, pleased with himself. “I had Gates take it private.”
⁷²

“Oh,” Baker said, deeply relieved.

“You forget I was at Langley. I was in charge of Langley. I know all the tricks. Or most of them. I wasn't out in the field. But I sure had some of those field agents in to tell me what was what and how we accomplish some of the tricks of the trade.”

“Gates is a good man,” Baker said. Robert Gates was. He was a stand-up guy, that is to say, he wouldn't tell Congress
something just because the law required him to and would be unembarrassed if the truth was later revealed. He'd been a Soviet scholar, head of all CIA analysts, executive assistant to Director of the CIA William Casey and then Casey's deputy director. Reagan named Gates to succeed Casey, but his nomination was withdrawn when it came out that he'd failed to notify Congress, as required by law, of Ollie North's diversion to the contras of the profits from arms sales to Iran. He also had an extensive history of doctoring data to reflect political goals rather than reality.

“You bet,” Bush said.

“How's the money getting to Bunker?”

“I'm out of the loop on that one,” Bush said.

“George, I really think you should have told me. I am secretary of state.”

“Well, with things, this opportunity was the occasion.”

“I mean if we're going to go to war with someone”—Baker managed a smile—”I should be aware of it.” At the time he had read the Memo, it had seemed strangely compelling. Now it just seemed strange.

“Don't be a pussy, limbo. And you might think you're smarter than me, I know you think that you're smarter than me. But don't underestimate me like so many of them do. I've been a congressman, chairman of the Republican party, head of the CIA, ambassador to China, and Ambassador to the U.N. Now how many people do you know who've done even one of those things, let alone two of them, without getting their ass in a sling? Huh?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. President. You have a point. You have an excellent knack for not putting your ass in a sling.”

“Or my nuts in a vise. Or my tits in a wringer. Or any other of those things.”

“Let me pour you a drink, Mr. President.”

“Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And, Mr. Secretary, I want you to know that I have this very much under control. I'm not going to do something stupid here. I am not going to go down in history as the stupid president. But I am going to do whatever it takes to win. Now are you onboard or are you gonna jump ship?”

“We're at twenty-two thousand feet, I'm not going to jump ship,” Baker said. He passed a Chivas to his president, then took his own. He decided he was going to block this insanity. If for no other reason than that the president had done an end run around him. Not that Bush didn't do that from time to time, just to prove who was in charge. That was OK. Normally. But not about something important.

“I got an ace up my sleeve,” the president chuckled. “I love it. Just like Burt Maverick.”

Baker raised his glass in salute. He didn't say anything about Bret or Bart. The president touched it with his own.

“To war,” Bush said. “To a good war.”

“I just want to know one thing,” Baker said, waiting to drink. “Who are we going to go to war with?”

“I don't know. It's just in development.”

 

 

 

⁶⁸
It is for the Japanese what the penis is for the black man. The thing that they have that is reputed to be larger than the whites', more potent, more irresistible—the thing about his race of which the white man is most afraid and with which he will sexually enslave the women of the white race.

⁶⁹
If anyone wants to be reminded of the details, they are: 1983, Neil Bush (son of G.B.) goes into the oil business. Neil puts up $100. His two partners put up $160,000. 1985, Neil becomes a paid director of Silverado, which loans his partners $132,000,000. 1987, one of his partners “forgives” a $100,000 loan to Neil. 1988, the developers default, Silverado fails. FDIC bailout cost about $1,000,000,000. (Sources—
Time,
Spy)

⁷⁰
There is no evidence whatsoever that the president or the secretary of state-intervened with Justice on behalf of Neil Bush.

⁷¹
I have never in my writing life had a character “quip.” I cringe at “he quippeds.” However, it seems to me that Bush is a person who does exactly that, so here it is, this one's for the quipper.

⁷²
The various “intelligence” agencies of the United States have always used, owned, created, financed, controlled, associated with, external organizations. In the post-Watergate years a lot of information about the CIA, in particular, came out. Illegal and incompetent and wasteful and silly activities were revealed. The CIA was placed under a variety of new restrictions and “cleaned house.” The recent history of Iran-contra demonstrates that alternative formats, a little further removed from congressional scrutiny, were immediately developed. That those efforts were discovered and Ollie North appears to have been so incompetent doesn't mean all such alternatives have been revealed or that all are so bumbling and ineffective. Remember, this is the administration that believes in privatization. Wackenhut does security for U.S. embassies; Universal Security has a variety of government contracts, including urine analysis and drug screening of employees of the Departments of Agriculture and of Transportation.

Gates was not at the CIA at this time, he was at the NSC. After these events, in 1991, Bush would nominate Gates, once again, as director of the CIA.

W
HEN
I
OPEN
the office, I expect people to look at me with a certain amount of contempt. Sniggering behind my back, that kind of thing. They don't. That's the glory of L.A.: it doesn't matter where you get it; no one cares how you get it; the only thing that counts is if you get it. Or if you don't. I wear my new wardrobe. When I drive, it's as the boyfriend, not as the chauffeur. I start to go places publicly with Maggie, the lunches—which are all business—parties—which are all business—meetings—which are almost all social.

The most important lunch, of course, is with David Hartman. He agrees that Maggie should take that next step and have her own development company. With someone else paying for it of course. We discuss where the money might come from. There's mention of JVC/Victor and Musashi, possibly MGM, because there's some talk over there of more “women's pictures.” He might take it to Paramount too.

Which, of course, is not what the meeting is really about. It's really about him and me looking each other over. Sizing each other up. He makes himself likable. That's fine. He drops in a couple of lines of Marine talk.

Maggie slides her hand over mine.
CUTAWAY
of her hand as it slides over mine, takes possession, establishes communication, says
“This is my man.”
CU MAGGIE
's face as she does so.
CU HARTMAN
as he takes it in.
CU JOE
, who feels Maggie's hand cover him like Superman's cape. It shows on his face.

“Joe isn't saying anything I haven't thought, or felt, before,” Maggie says. “But being with him makes me stronger.”

Cut back to Hartman: he appears to believe.

It's a good thing that I'm not sleeping with her. The insanity of celibacy is all that keeps me sane. If I was beside her, inside her, I would have delusions of grandeur, and I would believe that I was her business manager, producer-to-be, general leech and profiteer. Anyway, I look over at her like she looks like a movie star to me, which she is, and like I'm a lovesick fool, which I am. But it's what she's doing—and I don't understand what that magic is—that makes the scene play as reality instead of scam. She glows like she's sated, shot full of the hormones of love. I'm almost fooled, and I know for a fact, from lights and noises, that her nights are as restless and unsatisfied as mine.

The woman can act. There's no doubt about it.

“I just want what's best for Maggie,” her agent says.

“So do I.”

“I see that.”

The waiter arrives with a bottle of wine. It's better than a hundred dollars at the liquor store, over two hundred dollars on the restaurant's wine list.