Authors: Gore Vidal
“Why then,” asked Burden, “do they inform?”
“Why,” Aeneas was sharp, “did those German officers get themselves hanged for trying to kill Hitler?”
Burden smiled bleakly. “Not an analogy that would have appealed to Franklin. Now I ask for no names.” Burden began to pace slowly up and down, past a series of paintings of his dry cactus-studded state. “I have a naval friend.”
“I know,” said Aeneas. “Admiral Richardson.”
“You said the name, not I.” Burden did not seem surprised.
“It is my impression, Senator, that Richardson opposed the President’s policy of provocation and so was relieved as commander in chief of the United States Fleet.”
“Your analysis, sir, not mine.” Burden was formal. “In the course of your investigation, Mr. Duncan, which is plainly considerably more thorough than that of Justice Roberts or Congress, have you come across a young officer who might have drawn up a plan? Of provocation?”
“Yes, sir. I even worked with him, briefly, in Naval Intelligence. He was head of the Far Eastern Desk. I was on loan from Air Forces Intelligence. His name is Arthur McCollum.” Aeneas handed Burden a folder. “The plan of what you call ‘provocation’ is here, with some other relevant information.”
Burden opened the folder. “Annapolis. Regular Navy. Born 1898 in Nagasaki, Japan. That’s ironic, I suppose.”
“Parents were Baptist missionaries. McCollum speaks perfect Japanese. He says he taught the Crown Prince, now Emperor Hirohito, how to dance the Charleston. In due course Lieutenant Commander McCollum ended up here in Naval Intelligence as an authority on Japan. It would seem that his principal task, other than using his own first-rate intelligence for the service, was to act as liaison between the Navy and President Roosevelt. He did this from the beginning of 1940 up to Pearl Harbor. The President liked him. They also seemed to have come to an agreement since each believed the war with Japan was inevitable, why not provoke it at a time convenient to us.”
Burden sighed. “Convenient!”
“Well, sir, it is
in
convenience that undoes Machiavelli.”
“Nice,” said Peter.
“I just made it up.” Aeneas smiled wanly. “It’s probably not true.”
“If this is the same young man that my naval friend was referring to, did he ever draw up a … program for the President?”
“Yes, sir. Eight points of provocation in a memo dated October seventh, 1940. The same month that we were breaking the Japanese codes. As far as I can tell, all copies—and there couldn’t have been many—have disappeared.”
“Grace Tully must have one.”
“So has McCollum, I should think. I worked out the contents from other documents currently missing from the open files.”
Burden was looking at a page in the folder. “These eight points. From A to H …”
“If acted upon, would require the Japanese to respond with an act of war.” Aeneas took back the folder; began to read.
“ ‘A. Make an arrangement with Britain to use their Pacific bases, particularly Singapore. B. The same arrangement with the Dutch for the East Indies. C. Then more and more aid to Chiang Kai-shek on the mainland of Asia. D. Send a division of long-range heavy cruisers to the Philippines. E. Send two divisions of submarines to the same area, possibly based at Singapore. F.’—this is what upset your naval friend—‘Keep the main Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor instead of San Diego.’ In order to tempt them—as I read it—to try for a knockout blow. When Admiral Richardson objected, the President fired him. ‘G. Oblige the Dutch to stop all sale of oil or anything else to Japan.’ Finally, H., which produced Mr. Hull’s memo of November twenty-ninth, 1941. We would embargo all trade with Japan if they did not withdraw from China, Manchuria, and so on. That did the trick. Since they could not accept this ultimatum, they blew up our fleet. So the eight-point plan did the trick.”
“They actually thought they could win a war against us?” Burden was incredulous.
“Not win. Buy time.” Aeneas began, slowly, to twirl his wedding ring, a sign of—for some reason that Peter had not worked out—uncertainty.
“They figured it would take us a year to recover, by which time they would have occupied southern Asia and we would never be able to dislodge them. They also knew enough about the President to figure that his only real interest was Europe. They also didn’t think we had the means or the power to fight two major wars on two hemispheres. So they took a calculated risk that proved to be miscalculated.”
Burden started to pace the room again. “Will McCollum testify to the Senate?”
“He must, if ordered to. Will he tell you about his program? No. He has sworn a military oath of secrecy.”
“No military oath takes precedence over the Constitution.”
“The military, sir, have the guns.”
Burden stopped in his tracks. “They would overthrow the government?”
“I think—this is only a guess, sir—that if they were driven into a corner by Congress or the new President, they would … well, let’s say be mutinous. After all, it’s their view that they have just won two great wars despite the politicians.”
“And it is our view that we won despite the generals and admirals.” Burden’s sarcasm was genuine. Peter knew that the Senator had always been suspicious of the military, particularly at appropriation time. “Is there proof, Mr. Duncan, that the President ever said or gave the go-ahead to these acts of provocation?”
“Only circumstantial. Commander Arthur McCollum himself often made deliveries of intercepts to the President, but usually they were routed through his naval aide.”
“Who is what my naval friend calls one of the military kowtowers at the White House.”
“Admiral Richardson is already on record as saying that the chief kowtower, Admiral Stark, is the most culpable of anyone for Pearl Harbor because he deliberately refused to inform the Hawaiian commanders of the coming attack.”
“Why didn’t he, Mr. Duncan?”
“Surely the Senate must find the answer.” The wedding ring no longer twirled.
“No.” Burden shook his head. “Not this Senate. Brewster will
complain. The Democrats will paper everything over. Then in—when did you say?”
“1995.”
“When we’re all gone, the story will come out. Frustrating.”
Peter had caught a glimpse of Diana coming out of the woods above the house. Peter rose. Aeneas retrieved his various folders. “I think,” said Peter, “that we can put together a sort of hypothetical story, without running the risk of prison. ‘Unanswered questions’ we might call it.”
“You’re very brave, Peter.” Burden seemed to mean what he said. “I’ll do what I can …”
“Put our unanswered questions into the
Congressional Record
. That would be a help.”
“Hardly a great blow for liberty. But the trend toward liberty is hardly noticeable these days. Too much has been done in unconstitutional secret, too many crimes covered up.”
“The cost,” said Peter, as blithely as he could, “of empire.”
They parted. Aeneas drove back to the Union Trust Building while Peter asked Diana for a ride. “Where to?”
“Laurel House. Unless you object?”
“No. I like your parents, as parents go.” Mostly in silence they drove along the canal that paralleled the Potomac. The early morning’s light snow was turning to slush. “They’ve taken in Alice, haven’t they?”
Peter, at first, had no idea whom she was talking about. “Alice who?”
“Your niece, Enid’s child. By Clay. We assume.”
“Oh, yes. I suppose so. How did you know?”
“Clay told me. After Enid was put away …” She did not finish.
“And Clay is now a legal resident of the Sunflower Hotel in that state of his, until November at least.” Peter turned onto Chain Bridge, a splendid relic of the Civil War, all chains and skeletal girders flung in what looked to be a haphazard way across the Potomac, now darkly aswirl with icy winter currents. The bridge was doubly symbolic: the last thing for him to cross after leaving home on the Virginia side of the river, the first thing that he crossed when he left the District of Columbia for Laurel House. He noted how comparatively placid the river was
for this season. Usually it had risen dramatically by January, twisting and turning and roaring. Were there floods to come? As a boy, he had watched with awe sheets of water strike the bridge which would then writhe and sway and threaten to break into pieces and fall, full fathom five to the dark mud bottom. Threaten but never had. So far.
“Do you see her?” Diana was frowning. Peter wondered why.
“See Alice?”
“See Enid.”
“Yes. From time to time. Dr. Paulus thinks it may take a year or two to dry her out and deal with her demons …” Peter glanced at Diana’s profile; the jaw was set, concentrating on the road. “Have you been out to the sanitarium?”
“No. But she did ring me not long ago. To warn me against Clay.” Diana turned onto the river road, made dangerous by black ice; she drove in second gear. The road was narrow, two lanes that, at points, particularly on curves, could not properly accommodate two cars as they passed each other. One would have to skid to a halt. Peter tried, as he often had in the past, to visualize the Washington dignitaries in their carriages, on a warm summery day, driving out to see the Union Army suffer its first major defeat at Manassas Court House. A former slave, allowed to live for nothing in his cabin on the Laurel House grounds, enjoyed recounting the events of that fateful day, and though the Union Army eventually took credit for freeing him, he himself favored the white Confederates whom he knew as opposed to the Yankees of whom he had never heard a good word. Peter assumed he was no longer alive.
A mirage of low-slung coaches containing smart congressmen and be-bustled ladies faded into the snowy woods on either side of the river road. “Warned you of what?” The thought of Enid and Diana even knowing each other well enough to talk on the telephone seemed somehow wrong.
“She is convinced that Clay will run against Father in 1950.”
“Isn’t this a little too soon to be plotting? Clay won’t be elected to the House until November, if he’s elected, which he can’t be without your father’s help. Then, if he is, 1950 is still four years away.”
“I know. It makes no sense to me. I just wondered if Enid had said anything to you.”
“No. But I’ll bring it up when I see her next week. I’ve never trusted Clay.”
“I know.” Diana swung the car onto the driveway leading through woods to Laurel House; then she stopped, engine running. “He’s in a great hurry.”
“Is that the excuse for what he’s done—does?”
“I think it probably is. Of course, he’s used Father mercilessly.”
“He’s also used my father—but mercifully.” Peter was rather pleased with that highly fraught adverb. “I’ve always suspected a wide streak of lavender, as Blaise would say, in Blaise. Clay brings it out.”
Diana stopped frowning and smiled. “He flirts.”
“He’s catnip, obviously, to powerful old men.”
“Women, too.”
“To you?” Would what had been unspoken between them for so many years now be said?
“Yes.”
Peter stared out the car window. A red-brick wing to Laurel House was visible through the rows of thin trees neatly set in fresh snow the way department-store Christmas trees are set in fiberglass. “They used to say that during the fighting here at Fort Marcey, all the trees were knocked down, and that the new ones never again grew to their old height. You should have told me.”
“I never thought you’d be really interested.”
“What splendid antennae you have! No emotion goes undetected; no matter how delicate.” Irony was an easy option at such a time. But then Peter had never before encountered such a time as this. He was cool in most relationships and easily satisfied with brief encounters in those parts of town where he was not apt to find anyone that he knew except, of course, those also on the prowl, in which case mutual discretion was the rule. Also, in wartime, the ratio of women to men in the city had been so skewed that between working women and military men serious emotions need be neither tapped nor affected. But with Diana that day beside the spring in Rock Creek Park, he had
experienced a sense of total familiarity, if not of lust—friends, for him, were exempt from so predatory an emotion. Rather, a powerful desire simply to be with her was, in his view, a far deeper emotion than the mere sexual, particularly because he had assumed that it was exactly the way she herself had felt when she hastily, mistakenly, kissed his earlobe.
“Clay was the first,” she said.
“And Billy Thorne the second.”
“Yes.”
“No one can accuse you of having a type.”
“Each made the weather, in his way.”
“Each used you.” That was brutal.
“I’m not vain. Why not be used? Or be of use. Of course, Billy turned out to be ridiculous and so did I, for marrying him.”
“And Clay?”
Diana turned and faced him. “We plan to be married after the election.”
“Even if he’s not elected?” This was most brutal of all.
“That’s below the belt. Anyway, if he’s not, which is unlikely, I admit that he probably will not renew his offer to me. He will need a rich wife. Of course, he needs one now, but I serve his purpose in other ways. I’m Burden’s daughter. That will help him in the state. In Congress, too, only …” She stopped; again, the frown. “Father thinks he can beat Truman. In the 1948 primary. He thinks Dewey will be easy to beat in the general election.”
“In which case, President Day’s daughter gets her man.”
“To put it bluntly. But Father’s too old now. He’ll settle for reelection in 1950. I think Clay may try to …” She stopped.
“I can’t imagine him running against his own father-in-law.”
“I’m not so sure. If he did, he would be obliged to run as a divorced man. Twice divorced. First from Enid. Then from me.”
“It would seem that you hold all the cards.”
“No. Only what I’ve been dealt. But I’m not sure if I want to play them. I think when my father was young he must have been very like Clay. Ruthless. In a hurry. That excites Electra, you know.”
“How would I know? I’m only what’s his name? Her brother? Orestes. Pursued by Furies.”