The 45th, page 34
Nodding his appreciation, Ismael got up to leave. His eyes drifted to the book that John F. Kennedy had liked so much, and then, almost by chance, to the document that lay next to it. “FBI?”
“Yes. It seems that some of our friends - Chambers, Murray - may not be content with just spending half their fortunes trying to stop what we’re trying to do,” he explained, tapping his finger on the thick, blue cover. “Strange, though, when you think about it. What better way to guarantee passage of something you oppose than to assassinate the president responsible for it?”
Ismael was thunderstruck. For a moment he could not speak.
“I wouldn’t worry much about it. There are always people out there making threats.”
“Not people like Rufus Chambers and Angela Murray.” Suddenly, he thought of something. “Chambers, Murray - but not Wilson?”
“He isn’t mentioned. But it’s all just talk. The only reason there is a report is because I asked Justice to see if any laws were broken by the kind of expenditures that were made during the campaign. Someone ought to be prosecuted for that.”
“May I - take it with me, read it myself?”
Julian tried to suggest that it was not worth his time, that there were more important things to worry about.
“I read pretty fast,” Ismael reminded him in a tone of voice so determined that it was, even for Julian, difficult to refuse.
“All right,” he agreed, reluctantly; “but remember, this is confidential. Nothing gets said about this to anyone. And besides, it may become useful.”
“Useful?”
“We’ll see.” And with that, Julian picked up his pen and started correcting what he had written.
Chapter Twenty Two
More than surprised, Conrad Wilson was astonished when his secretary hurried into his office to tell him that Ismael Cooper was waiting to see him. No one had called, no one had made an appointment, and, more to the point, no one had asked him to come to Washington to see the president’s chief of staff. Cooper was here, just outside, and that meant that whatever Cooper wanted was urgent. He had not seen him since the night he tried to talk to him just before Julian Drake’s first press conference in D.C.
“Show him in,” he said, finally. “No, never mind; I’ll take care of this.” He got up from the glass and grey steel desk and walked to the hand wrought double doors , polished brass and shadowed Venetian glass. He pushed them open, just in time to see the expression of cold anger on Ismael’s face, and forced himself to sound pleased to see him.
“Ismael, this is a surprise. Are you in New York for…?”
Ismael did not even pretend to be interested. He walked right past him and with an air of importance that was unusual for him, settled into a tall, narrow cushioned straight back chair in front of Wilson’s desk. Unlike nearly everyone else on their first visit, Ismael did not bother with the view from the eightieth floor over the park; he did not so much as glance at the half dozen French Impressionist paintings that lined the wall. He opened his briefcase, dropped a thin document on the desk, and just sat there, staring straight ahead, waiting for Wilson to get back to his chair. Wilson felt like someone who, accused of a crime he did not commit, begins to doubt his own innocence. The document that lay unopened on his desk seemed a warrant for his guilt.
“What is this?” he asked, trying to appear carelessly indifferent.
“It’s an FBI report. I read it last night. My first thought when I finished was that you should read it today.”
“You want me to…?” He slid his fingers toward it, slowly and with reluctance, as if any, even the slightest, contact with it would be tantamount to a confession. He pulled his fingers back. “This concerns me, exactly how?” Tilting his head to the side, an equivocal look in his grayish blue eyes, Wilson studied Ismael closely. “What is it you think…? Am I supposed to have…? You came all the way to -”
“Read it, damn it, Conrad! It won’t take long,” insisted Ismael with such sudden anger that before he knew what he was doing Wilson opened it to the first page and began to read. He did not read long. Three lines into it, his mouth fell open.
“Good God! - I don’t believe….” He shook his head, bitterly and with reproach. “I should have known, I should have…”
He leaned forward on his elbows, holding his head between the spread fingers of his hands, reading with growing interest and concern about what appeared a conspiracy that, at least by implication, seemed to suggest his involvement. As his concentration deepened, the speed with which he read increased, matching in its own way what, the moment he finished, was a rush to judgment.
“I had nothing to do with this! Nothing! So if you have -”
“Your name isn’t in there,” replied Ismael, his gaze cold, determined and withering in its contempt. “Should it be?”
“No! Of course not; I just thought….Yes, I see. You assumed because I know them, because we have been involved together politically, I must have known about - this! But I didn’t!”
“You just said you should have known. Isn’t that what you said: that you should have known? Should have known what? - That your friends and associates, Rufus Chambers and Angela Murray - and who knows how many others - were planning the assassination of the president?”
Wilson turned red; he began to fidget with his hands. He looked out the window, out across the park, remembering suddenly that night in Rufus Chambers’ office, just a few blocks away, when the three of them had watched Julian Drake on television, remembered what Angela Murray had said; and not just that, but the ease with which she had said it, the absence of all conscience, the question of someone’s life or death no different than a simple calculation of cost and benefit.
“Angela I believe, but Rufus…? I don’t care what this says, he couldn’t…unless….She has a hold on him. I don’t understand it, I’ve never understood it. He tries to reason with her, to get her to tone things down, but in the end - whatever she wants, he doesn’t try to stop her.” Wilson shoved himself back from the desk, angry, depressed, uncertain what to do. “Why are you here? What is it you want from me?”
“It’s very simple: I want you to stop it.”
“Stop…? How? You think I just have to ask, call them up, invite them over, tell them the FBI has been wiretapping their phones, listening to their conversations; tell them that I have seen extracts of the damning things they have said, how if they were to go through with it, take the action they’ve been talking about, had a president assassinated, they would each be arrested within a matter of minutes? You think that -” He glanced again at the report. “They haven’t done anything: they haven’t taken any action. All you really have is talk, talk abut what they want to do - what she wants to do - and the different ways it might be done. I’m not a lawyer, but don’t you need more than words, doesn’t someone have to take a step to put a plan into action?”
Ismael listened with a blank expression and ignored everything Wilson said.
“I want you to give them that,” he said, pointing to the report. “Tell them that there are copies. Tell them that it doesn’t matter whether there is enough to prosecute. If they don’t do exactly what I want them to, every news source in America will have a copy. Perhaps they can explain how it was only talk, that they never really meant to do anything; perhaps they can explain to the shareholders in their various enterprises, to their boards of directors, that their idea of looking after the best interest of their companies was to spend their time planning - ‘talking’ - about the best way to assassinate the president of the United States!” shouted Ismael, as he rose from his chair and stared hard at Wilson. “Now, call them both, tell them that something has happened, that you have to see them right away, tonight!”
“I’m not sure they’re in town. I haven’t spoken to either of them since the night -”
“They’re in town. After what I read last night, trust me, we’re always going to know where they are. Call them. Do it now. They’ll come, and when they do, give them that report and tell them they have only one way out.”
Five minutes later, Ismael was gone, on his way back to Washington, and Conrad Wilson sat alone in his office shaking like a brittle leaf in autumn. Two hours later, at seven o’clock, Rufus Chambers and Angela Murray arrived, doing nothing to hide their irritation at what Murray in particular thought a summons. She had barely sat down when she started venting her displeasure. Wilson stopped her with a look that would have caused anyone less certain of her own importance to vanish into mumbling incoherence.
In the two hours Wilson had alone, he had begun to understand more clearly the situation in which he found himself. He was not the one in trouble; he had nothing to fear. Ismael Cooper, and through him, the president, were not threatening him with any kind of reprisals for anything he might have done; he was being asked for a favor, serve as an emissary to deliver in no uncertain terms an ultimatum which, if his two former friends - that was how he now thought of them - chose to ignore it would mean their complete destruction. The more he thought about it, the more he thought about what it would to do to Angela Murray, a woman he had come, not just to distrust, but to despise, the more it seemed that the favor was one he might have asked for himself. By the time they walked into his office it was all he could do to control his exuberance.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked, the cheerful, well-mannered host. A smile full of subtlety and malice cut quick across his lip. “You might need it.”
He moved across to the paneled bar and poured himself a drink. Holding it in his hand, he stood for a moment, admiring the way the sinking sun bathed the park in such rich colors, the trees turned orange under the soft scarlet sky. He sipped on the scotch and water, studying the way the two story glass wall made everything below seem smaller and less significant. It was what he used to imagine as a boy, laying on the summer grass, wondering what it must be like to ride across the sky on one of the clouds that drifted overhead. It was strange, he thought to himself, how good he suddenly felt, how relieved, and all because he was the one about to deliver, and not receive, news worse than death.
“Ismael Cooper came to see me,” he announced, in a calm, steady voice. He waited to see their reaction. There was not any, just two blank faces. “He wanted to show me something,” he said, walking back across the enormous well-lit room to his desk. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like something? As I said….”
Rufus Chambers looked at Angela Murray. They were sitting at opposite ends of a sofa under the French Impressionist paintings Wilson prized more than anything he owned. Angela did not look at him. Her attention was concentrated on Wilson’s bizarre behavior: first, the demand that she drop everything, cancel her plans for the evening, and come to his office, and now this constant harping on the need - her need, according to him - for something to steel her nerves against what he had brought them there to tell them. She had had enough. She got to her feet.
“I don’t really care what Ismael Cooper wanted, and I certainly don’t care about whatever it is you want to tell me. Just say it, so I can get back to what I was doing.”
Wilson lifted an eyebrow. “More planning about how you intend to kill the president?” he asked, with a shrug so casual that there could be no mistake that, if he did not know everything, he knew enough. Angela sank back down onto the sofa.
“What are you talking about? Is that why Cooper…? Whatever he thinks he knows, he doesn’t….What’t that?” she asked, as Wilson pulled open a drawer and took out the FBI report.
“A gift. Something Cooper wanted me to give you.”
She started to get up, to go toward Wilson, but her legs betrayed her in their weakness: she could not move. Her eyes flashing with rage, she just sat there, her knees pressed tight together. Chambers grabbed the report out of Wilson’s hand and started to read, first one page, then another. He looked as if he had just been shot.
“They listened to what we…, tapped our phones, heard everything we talked about…?” He stared at Angela as if he thought she could somehow tell him none of it was true. He went toward her, and when she gave him that look of hers that told him she had once again found him wanting, he threw the report in her face. “Congratulations! You’ve finally done it. You never thought anything like this could happen, that you were too smart, too goddamn powerful, that you could get away with anything - And now! Now we’re both going to prison!”
Wilson laughed. Chambers looked at him in confusion; Angela looked at him with sheer hatred.
“You’re not going to prison - neither one of you, although God knows you should. What were you thinking, Rufus? We’ve known each other a long time; we practically started out together. You’re the last person I would ever have thought….It’s her, isn’t it? What you see in her, what kind of hold she has on you, how she could ever convince you to get involved in something like this, I -”
“Oh, shut up, Conrad!” cried Angela. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a woman even if you found one who wanted anything from you but your money. Just say what you have to say. Cooper gave you this report. So they were tapping our phones, listening to what we said . So what? - If there was evidence we ever did anything except talk about some fantasy, we wouldn’t be here, listening to this patronizing shit of yours; we would be under arrest, charged with a crime.”
“You’re right, Angela,” he replied, with an eagerness that surprised, and then alarmed, her. “There isn’t any evidence that you did anything, nothing that could be used to prove a conspiracy. But that doesn’t really matter. They have all they need.”
“All they need?”
“All they need to convince you to do the right thing.”
“And what, please tell me, is the right thing?”
“You - and that means both of you - are to stop this orchestrated campaign of yours against what the president is asking Congress for. You’re to stop all the television ads, all the threats to spend money against any congressman or senator who doesn’t vote against him, all the promises of money and support to any candidate who does what you want.”
Chambers let out a sigh of relief. His shoulders, sagging under the burden of all he had been caught doing, straightened up. The color came back to his face.
“That’s easy; that won’t be a problem. Consider it done.”
Angela did not share his willing enthusiasm. With more self-knowledge, she had a deeper suspicion of other people’s motives.
“There’s more, isn’t there. They want something else. But they can’t have it, they can’t have anything. You’ve already said they can’t prove anything. There isn’t anything to prove. So why should we - why should I - give a damn what they want?”
“Because if you don’t do what they want - if you don’t stop what you have been doing - if you don’t publicly change your mind,” he added, pronouncing each word as if were a court’s final sentence, “and announce that after reconsideration you have decided that the president is right, that everyone, every Republican, every Democrat, should join together and vote for everything the president has asked Congress to approve - if you don’t do that, and do it by the end of the day tomorrow, every newspaper, every television station, everyone will have their own copy of this report. Everyone in America will know what you said, how you were caught on tape planning the assassination of the president.”
Rufus Chambers went white; Angela Murray choked with rage. Conrad Wilson sipped quite contentedly on his drink.
“You know, I may be wrong, but I have the impression that Cooper - and I imagine Julian Drake as well - are almost hoping you don’t do it. After this gets out, what effect do you think your opposition to the president will have?”
She wanted to scream. Her jaw hurt, she was clenching it with so much pressure. Her eyes filled with fire. She stamped her heel on the marble floor, a quick, hard beat that echoed like a canon shot in the high-ceilinged room.
“I won’t be blackmailed, I won’t!”
“What you call blackmail, others might call justice.” Wilson’s lip curled back in stern disdain. “You have until five o’clock tomorrow. And, as I say, I don’t think they really care what you decide to do.”
Angela Murray was five feet six, but she had mastered the art of looking down her nose at much taller people. She tried that now, but Wilson, who had never liked her, now did not fear her. She might still be thought one of the two or three most successful, which in America meant powerful, women in the country, but he knew she was about to become either a laughingstock, if she suddenly changed sides, or a national disgrace if she did not. His only response was to shake his head and smile.
When they were alone in the elevator, Angela, staring straight ahead, listened with growing impatience to Rufus Chambers and his endless complaints.
“For God’s sake, Rufus, are you really so stupid you don’t see we’ve won?”
Rigid, erect, her thin shoulders held tight as a soldier on parade, she turned her head just far enough to let him see, not what he expected - the look of disdain that so often traced her disappointment in something he had done or said - but something close to sympathy. He had missed the point, had misunderstood the significance of what had just happened. She was smarter, quicker, than he was. He was not sure she always had better judgement, but she was always a little ahead of him, could see things a little earlier than he could. She could run circles around nearly everyone he knew. But for the life of him, he could not see that they had won anything.
